Are you in the second half of life?

A very personal essay on losing my ambition -- and finding something deeper

The beautiful art in today’s Kindred Letter is by Tracy Porter, whose site I encourage you to check out

As I write this, in a fairly cheerful mood, I’m facing, or have recently faced, all kinds of losses that we associate with the second half of life: the recent deaths of my father and older brother; my mother’s advancing Alzheimers; my beloved in-laws’ increasing infirmity; an imminent empty nest; and more.

These kinds of losses can pack a wallop: the deaths, especially, with their accompanying nausea, their unfillable holes, their way of causing spasms of grief at random moments.

One thing these losses didn’t do, though, was surprise me. I knew to expect such things, as I get older (I’m 57 as I write this).

But there’s another kind of loss that’s bothered me in a low grade, background hum kind of way, for the past few years. After a lifetime of doing, achieving, running around, and embarking excitedly on new projects – I lost my ambition.

I looked at my peers, working on their many endeavors, and for the first time I didn’t relate. I would think: I should write another book, I should try to come up with something that will move the culture the way QUIET did, I should shake things up a little.

But I don’t want to.

More loveliness from Tracy Porter

I want to write for, and tend to, the kindred spirits of this Quiet Life community; I want to see the world return to sanity; I want to hang out with my family; I want to visit Thin Places more often; I want to take long walks; I want to make a living.

But grand ambitions? They started to seem silly. They made me feel a vague malaise, when I thought of them, like a long to-do list of tedious tasks.

This has come up especially in a role I often play, as a mentor and encourager of younger authors. I recognize the drive these authors have to hit the bestseller list, to be a sought-after podcast guest, to become known: I understand the excitement they feel when they do. When I can, I try to help them get there, because only a short time ago I had the same dreams, and I remember so intensely what they felt like, how much they mattered to me. (And, who am I kidding, when I publish my next book, I want it to hit “the list”, too. I still love writing, still write on vacations, still feel deprived if I don’t. I’m grateful for every ounce of “known-ness” I have, because it allows me to do this work that I love so much.)

But recently I haven’t been able to shake the feeling that some important aspect of it was an illusion – all the running around, achieving, chasing, hoping, dreaming.

The desire to make a living is not, of course, an illusion. The drive to express oneself as beautifully as possible, and to connect with others via that expression (my personal definition of writerly creativity) is not an illusion. But the ambition, per se, felt like one. There was a part of me that wanted to shake these younger people, to say, “Don’t you see that you’re “looking for love in all the wrong places.”

But, of course, I didn’t do that. Partly because I know how much fun I had playing that particular game, so why shouldn’t they have the joy of playing it too? (Btw: whether or not one “wins” at the game is beside the point; playing it is its own joy.)

***But now I come to my real point: the reason I didn’t do it was out of an instinct I couldn’t put my finger on, but which I now realize was this: these younger writers were not, in fact, looking in “all the wrong places.” They were looking in exactly the right places – FOR THEIR STAGE OF LIFE. For the younger people I’ve mentored, their dreams, and their attempts to fulfill them, were right on schedule.

If you’re young, that is, it’s entirely appropriate to be consumed with questions of ambition, of establishing your identity, your niche, your place, your nest. If, as writing and many other professions do, this requires “making a name for yourself”, you will be consumed with this, too.

Similarly, if you deferred a particular dream – say, writing – for retirement, it’s also appropriate to pursue that dream with the gusto of a younger person; you just happen to be living out this particular dream on a different time frame. (I hear often from older people who wanted all their lives to be writers, and finally are going for it, and I cheer you on so much and wish to inspire you with examples of all the writers who published for the first time when they were in the second half of life, eg Harriet Doerr, whose first novel came out when she was 74).

But for many of us (and for me, at age 57), we start to ask ourselves: What are my dreams now? How should I be spending my time?

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The difficulty some of us have in answering such questions is that this stage of life comes with a lack of clear goals.

When we’re in our 20s, 30s, 40s, our task is clear: mating and journeying and carving out our place. We know that it’s time to “gracefully surrender the things of youth,” as the poet Max Ehrmann wrote, and to take up the mantle of young adulthood.

Similarly, when we’re ancient, or very infirm, our task is also clear: to ready ourselves for death. We need to let go of this life, to prepare for our final passage.

These things aren’t easy; they are often intensely challenging; but we do know what’s expected of us.

But what is the task of the second half of life? This can feel a lot less clear.

But here, I think, it is:

In the second half of life, the task is to trade ambition for wisdom, noise for quiet, certainty for mystery.

In the second half of life, we embark on the quest for meaning (or deepen the quest, for those of us who feel as if we’ve been on it all our lives!).

We shift from doing to being; we move beyond what the Christian mystic Richard Rohr calls the “tower of success,” to seek wisdom, purpose and service.

We tap into awe and wonder; we experience a spiritual deepening. (The famous UC Davis creativity researcher, Dean Keith Simonton, studied 81 Shakespearean and Athenian plays and concluded that their themes grew more religious, spiritual and mystical as the playwrights aged. He also studied classical composers, and found that musicologists rated their later works as “more profound.”)

We also see our relationships shift, moving toward fewer but deeper connections (here again, many introverts have been doing this all our lives!).

We deepen our inner lives, even as we’re often called to serve beyond ourselves.

And though we’re not yet facing death, we begin to live with an *awareness* of mortality – which causes us to gaze at the world with more appreciation, with what the novelist James Salter called “one long passionate look, and all that had been withheld would finally be given."

Still more from Tracy Porter

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If you, too, find yourself no longer chasing the same dreams you once held so dear — or wondering why the things that used to excite you now leave you feeling meh — this does not mean you’ve lost your way.

On the contrary, you’re probably very much on your way; you’re just ready for your second half.

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I’d love to know whether this resonates with you:

*What stage of life are you in?

*If you’re in your first half of life, in all its glorious urgency, how are you doing with your tasks and challenges? (I know that they’re often exciting, and also not always easy.)

*If you’re in the second half, have you experienced a shift of the kind I’m describing— from striving, toward something else? And, if the first half of life didn’t go the way you’d hoped, how do you see this affecting your second half?

*Wherever you are, I’m so glad that you’re HERE. And please, join the conversation!