From life’s first half to its second...

“Fall upward” from life’s first half to its second.

Life has two halves. You may not know it, but you’re either in the first half of life or you’re in the second half. You’re a first-halfer or you’re a second-halfer. We all are. 

In life, we have at least two major tasks to complete. In the first half of life, we discover the script for our life. In the second, we write and own that script. 

Or think of it this way. During the first half, you’re building the “container” for your life: your identity. The second half is all about “filling” that container – giving your life purpose.

This piece offers reassurance and guidance, whether you’re a first-halfer or a second-halfer. And, yes, it explains how we know there are two halves to life – and how to transition from the first to the second, you must “fall upward.”

Let’s get into it.

Life’s Two Halves

Important thing: the two halves of life aren’t related to age. Some people – particularly those who have suffered in some way – enter the second half of life early, even as children. Others get there much later in life, or not at all.

But if this is the case, what do we mean by “two halves,” and how do we know that these halves exist? 

Well, let’s consider, the famous comparative mythologist and theologist, called “the monomyth of the hero.” This is a story, a myth that is common to numerous cultures, though these cultures had no contact. The details differ, but the narrative arc is extremely similar.

The protagonist lives in an idyllic world, a place where they’re content. Often, they’re a prince or princess, or they have some divine origin they’re unaware of. Then, they leave home on an adventure – an adventure that forces them out of their comfort zone. While on the adventure, they encounter a problem. Whatever the problem is, the process of resolving it makes the hero’s world larger and more open; as a result, the protagonist’s outlook is enlarged and opened, too.

The protagonist thinks that the first task is their only task, but, in reality, it turns out the real task comes later. They discover that their real life is much deeper than their outward appearance. Finally, the protagonist returns to their roots, their home. And upon returning, they see it anew. 

“the place for the first time,” and they pass on the wisdom of their experience to others.

This myth is called “the hero’s journey.” And, as you may have guessed, it’s analogous to our own transition from the first half to the second half of life.

There are numerous other texts, both sacred and secular, written in a similar vein, by people who’d either undergone the transition from life’s first half to its second, or were in the process of going through it. And then, of course, there are our own observations of those who are in the second half, and of those who remain forever in the first.

Many people don’t realize that there is a second half to life; they remain in the first half their whole lives. There are many reasons for this. But no matter which half you’re in, knowing where you stand is beneficial: that knowledge can help you transition out of the first half or, if you’re in the second, it can be a comfort – a reassurance that you’re exactly where you should be.

The First Half of Life

We live in a “first-half-of-life culture.” It’s nothing new. It’s been this way throughout history. Our main purpose has always been to survive, so we concentrate on building our identities: establishing a home, a relationship, friendships, and a community.

Identifying what makes us significant, figuring out how we’ll support ourselves, finding people to accompany us through life – these are first-half-of-life concerns. We must do these things to create the “container” for our life.

Our first life journey concentrates on external factors; it values laws, traditions, customs, and authority. It gives us boundaries and a clear flavor of morality. We’re provided with security and predictability. We’re taught impulse control and our egos are given structure. We develop a strong sense of identity.

We need all of this. In our early years, without these things in place, our egos would take over and we’d simply have too many options. So these things are absolutely necessary as we grow up. Law and structure give us limits and prepare us for our relationship with the outer world.

It’s not until the second half of life that we try to discover what the contents for this container should be: what we actually want to do with our lives. Sadly, though, many people spend so much time building and repairing the container, they never have the time to work on the contents.

Even our institutions – including churches – are designed to support and reward first-life tasks. We may have an inkling that things aren’t working the way they should, but we keep on building the foundations without ever realizing there’s more to build.

Let’s go back to the hero’s journey for a moment and step back in history to 700 BC. It was around that time that Homer, an ancient Greek author and poet, wrote The Odyssey. His epic work recounts the story of an adventurous hero, Odysseus, as he travels home from the Trojan wars. Along the way, he encounters countless obstacles – seductive sirens, the cyclops Polyphemus, enticing lotus eaters. It takes him ten years, but finally he makes it home to Ithaca.

You might expect a happy-ever-after ending right there – after all, he’s reunited with his wife, his father, his son, and his faithful dog, Argos. But no. The story continues. Homer wrote two more chapters detailing a second journey that Odysseus has to undertake. Perhaps even back in ancient Greece, Homer knew there had to be something more.

After returning home and being united with his loved ones, Odysseus undertakes his second journey. He’d learned about this journey during his odyssey home, from a blind seer named Tiresias, who he’d spoken to in (of all places) Hades, the kingdom of the dead. We can think of this trip to Hades as Odysseus’s rock bottom; there is, quite literally, no farther “down” to go – and yet it is then that he hears new things, even if he hardly acknowledges them at the time.

His second journey involves returning to the mainland – Ithaca is an island – and we can think of this as a metaphor for him needing to reconnect with the bigger picture. Then he has to keep traveling inland with an oar until he meets someone unfamiliar with the sea. Someone so unfamiliar that they’ll mistake the oar for a winnowing shovel – a tool for separating grain from chaff. This is his journey’s end. Once this happens, he has to plant the oar there and leave it. This can be seen as a kind of initiation rite – perhaps like burying your childhood toys. But he’s not yet done.

He then has to sacrifice a ram, a bull, and a boar – symbolic of his “untrained and immature” male energy – to Neptune, the god of the sea, who’d accompanied him throughout his first journey. In essence, he’s shedding the tools he’d used during the first half of his life. He’ll now need a whole new set of tools to walk the second half.

Finally, Odysseus returns home to Ithaca. More sacrifices follow and only then does he get to live the rest of his life with his people around him until he sinks “under the burden of years” and death comes to him “gently from the sea.” Odysseus doesn’t see death as a threat; he’s lived both halves of his life and, in the end, is ready to let go freely.

The world’s three monotheistic religions also contain stories of transition to a new half of life. For example, God asks Abraham and Sarah to leave their country, family, and father’s house to go to a new land. And in the New Testament, Jesus calls his disciples to a new journey.

Each of us must transition from the first half to the second half of life. But here’s the thing: this transition can’t be achieved by your own willpower or moral perfection. What you need to do is to “fall upward.” Before you can go “up,” you first have to go “down,” just like Odysseus had to travel to the underworld. You need to fall – but you need to fall well. The difficult part to comprehend for first-half lifers is that they won’t know this to be true until they’ve gone through the “down” themselves and come out of it on the other side.

Falling

In post–World War II Japan, returning soldiers were often not prepared for a return to civil society. They had been a “loyal soldier” and now needed a broader identity if they were to reenter their communities in a useful capacity. To enable this, a communal ritual was established in which the soldier was thanked and praised for his service. An elder would declare that the war was over and that the person was needed by the community as something more than a soldier. This kind of process – “discharging the loyal soldier” – is needed by many of us to give closure when we are transitioning from one chapter in our lives to another.

Our own loyal soldiers have seen us through the first half of life. They’ve helped us to look both ways before crossing the street, given us impulse control to avoid addictions, and taught us to say no so we can build our boundaries, dignity, and identities. But our loyal soldiers simply can’t help us get to the second half of life. They haven’t been there and simply don’t understand it. They may have been able to help us with that early decision-making in black-and-white thinking, but if we’re to move on, there comes a time when we have to part ways. The Japanese certainly had the right idea. And if we go back to our hero, Odysseus, we can see that he too was a loyal soldier, rowing his boat right up to his second journey.

When you finally let go of your loyal soldier as being like a “severe death” as you exile yourself from what you knew. Most people lack the courage to move forward and need a guide or a “stumbling block” to move forward. Unfortunately, wise guides are hard to come by, so it’s only when our loyal soldiers are found wanting, and are inadequate for real-life issues, that we’ll finally discharge them.

And that brings us back to that “falling well” we mentioned earlier – our “stumbling block.”

At some point in our lives, we’ll face something we simply can’t deal with, regardless of our skills, knowledge, or willpower. It could be an event, a person, a tragedy, a relationship, the death of a loved one, or an idea. Whatever it is, though, it takes us to the very limit of our resources. We stumble. We fall. But this is important. If we never stumble, if we never fall, if we never experience what calls “necessary suffering,” we’d never have a reason to leave our comfort zone.

Life is hard. Suffering, like death, is an inevitable part of life. We shouldn’t deny this fact. Carl Jung, the psychoanalyst, noted in his 1938 book Psychology and Religion that neuroses often occur as a result of an inability to accept the “legitimate suffering” of being human. When we refuse this “necessary pain” it only results in us suffering tenfold in the long run.

But one thing we can’t do is simply engineer our necessary fall. If we were to try, we’d only be ready for what we think we need to look for. In reality, we wouldn’t change at all – we’d just go through some “self-improvement” brought about on our own terms. It’s only through stumbling and falling – not simply reading about it – that we learn to give up control to the “Real Guide.”

Spiritually, if we are to find something, it seems, we first have to lose it or ignore it, or maybe miss it or long for it, and then find it again. Odysseus’s story and other tales from mythology are filled with loss and humiliation, which are variously represented by dragons or sea monsters, illnesses or plagues, a shipwreck, a journey into hell, homelessness, blindness, poverty, and myriad other situations.

The Gospels also offer insight into the process. In Matthew 16: 25–26, Jesus tells us, “Anyone who wants to save their life must lose it. Anyone who loses their life will find it. What gain is there if you win the whole world and lose your very self? What can you offer in exchange for your one life?”

Through these words, he made it clear that necessary suffering can’t be avoided. It’s necessary to “lose your life” – or others call your “false self”: your role, your title, your personal image – if you are ever to find your true self.

Zen masters call your true self “the face you had before you were born.” It’s your absolute identity, or who you were “from the beginning in the mind and heart of God.” When you find your true self, you’ve learned to live in the “big picture” – you’re part of both time, and history. For Jesus, this is living in “the Kingdom of God.”

The Second Half of Life.

So we’re going to look at what the second half of life holds for us and some of the ways in which it differs from the first half.

The first thing is that the seriousness of the second half of life is characterized by what we call “a bright sadness and a sober happiness.” Although there is still darkness, we’re able to cope with it with less anxiety. We think differently, too. We have less of a need to hold on to hurts from the past and less of a desire to judge others. We lose our feelings of superiority. And we learn not only to stop fighting stupidity but to actively ignore it. We work for change, using our influence to persuade quietly. 

The boundaries of our “containers” are now larger, expanded through our many experiences and relationships. When we were young we looked for things to differentiate us from our friends and family, but now we look more for things that we have in common. We don’t have to stand out, nor do we try to change others. Simply being here is enough.

But this stance, this simple presence, is authoritative and influential, too. True elders define the depth and breadth of any conversation merely by being there. They don’t even need to speak. When they do, they need only a few well-chosen words to get their point across. If you’re using too many words,then you can hardly be a true elder.

In the first half of life, we often have strong opinions, needs, and preferences. But when you’re in the second half, you no longer need to have strong and final opinions about anything and everything. Nor do you feel the need to change others in order to be happy yourself – even if, in actual fact, you’re in a position to do so. Instead, you influence and help others simply by being.

You may also find yourself experiencing a kind of “double belonging.” No single group you belong to can meet all of your needs and desires, your vision. You’ll find that you have a new capacity for nondualistic thinking, or “both-and” thinking. Things no longer have to be categorized as totally right or totally wrong.

Jesus was the first nondualistic thinker in Western cultures. For example, Jesus said that God’s sun shines on both the good and the bad, and his rain falls on both the just and the unjust. And he also implored us to allow weeds and wheat to grow together so as not to pull up the wheat along with the weeds.

Without this transition to nondualistic thinking we remain stuck in the first half of life – just as most of humanity has done up to now.

Most people think about the second half of life as being about getting old, having health problems, and finally “letting go” of their physical lives. Hopefully, by now, you’re thinking otherwise: instead, you can think of it as falling upward into a bigger, deeper, more connected world. 

You will fell upward when you are in your forties, after realizing that, paradoxically, many people loved you for someone you weren't, while others resented you for someone you weren't, too. At the same time, there were many who loved you for who you really were – “warts and all” – and yet others who criticized you for who you were. You also will realise how people reacted to you often said more about them than it did about you. In the second half of life, you begin to understand the difference between those people who are dealing with their own issues through you and those who are dealing with the real you.

Nobody can stop you from entering the second half of your life except you. Some kind of falling is necessary in order to start the second journey in life: “pain is part of the deal.” So don’t waste your time complaining about your failed relationship, losing your job, your identity, your poverty, or anything else. God will give you what you want.

Here we’ve explored how there are two halves of life. In the first, we build a “container” – our identity. In the second, we “fill” that container – we discover our purpose. Some people are too fixated on the first half to ever enter the second. To enter the second half of life, we need to fall – and do it well. We need to encounter a “stumbling block” – a problem – in life that’s beyond our own resources to resolve. Finally, we learned that the second half of life offers us a “bright sadness and a sober happiness” where we embrace nondualistic “both-and” thinking and simply being is enough.