There’s a phrase that has been knocking around in my thinking for some time now: “the second half of life”.
My path toward understanding this transition began, in part, by listening to Fr. Richard Rohr’s book, Falling Upward. The core insight – that wisdom involves embracing doubt and struggle rather than seeking simple answers – resonated deeply with my need to find a way to live a life greater than the one I had been capable of achieving in the past.
When I turned 45, I felt a definite sense that I could have reached the half-way point of life and since passing 50, I find myself having deeper, existential thoughts more often. Now, I have no idea how much life remains – another 45 or 50 years, or maybe only 10, maybe less. The chronology is irrelevant. But the point is this: It seems to take us until around this age to have amassed the necessary experience of life to be able to start to shift into a new way of thinking and being.
In a podcast interview about his book, Fr. Rohr said that the first half of life is about building a vessel and the second half is about making something to put into it. Or perhaps in other words that the first half is about the accumulation of knowledge and experience, whereas the second half’s purpose is to distil all of that into WISDOM. It’s the process of becoming, as we used to call them in many societies “an elder”. That really resonates.
The recognition is profound though: the focus of the second half of our lives must be fundamentally different from the first. This shift involves seeking clarity and wisdom, moving past youthful certainty to embrace complexity, a journey that has fundamentally reshaped my relationship with traditional faith.
The necessity of solitude and leaving the familiar
A significant part of this odyssey has, for me at least, required intentionally stepping away from structured religious life to explore what faith truly means now.
In the early years of my life as a Christian, I gained a lot from being part of a church community. But then, as the years passed, regular church attendance began to feel like a people-pleasing obligation, rather than a genuine source of spiritual fuel. The feeling that church was something that had run its course and no longer fitted became undeniable. In truth (and after some reflection), I struggled deeply with the rigid structures and simplistic answers found in some evangelical traditions.
I found myself increasingly at odds (internally at least) with the views of church friends, particularly struggling to accept the absolute view of salvation only through faith in Christ. When I stopped to consider all of the good and beautiful-hearted people in the world, the dogma that any non-Christians among them are damned for all eternity felt illogical to say the least.
I realised that the church I was part of really didn’t feel like home any more and that neither did any others. Too much of our focus was about getting other people to come over to our way of believing. That trying to convert others was the thing which mattered most. Too much discussion about those who were “in” and those who were “out”.
Moving into the second half of life, the wisdom gained points toward a different priority: focusing more on helping people to become better people individually. To live happier, more helpful lives – whatever the faith they choose to follow (or not).
I’ve written about this before, but over the last few years I’ve found that meditation and the practice of mindfulness offer a huge sense of peace, positivity, and personal development. This is somewhat in contrast to the times that I had to force myself to pray or read the Bible when that desire was absent.
I needed to move beyond the familiar and search for a deeper sense of who God (or the universe or whatever we choose to call him or her) is and not just accept the persona that we’re given by Bible preachers. This period of searching, though often incredibly solitary, is necessary for discovering a “more realistic” understanding of the divine. I guess it’s no coincidence that many of the wisest people throughout the history of many faiths have spent time in solitary contemplation.
Finding purpose in the struggle
The wisdom of the elder is found not in avoiding difficulty, but in recognising that growth often occurs in the wilderness. The struggle itself is precisely where profound truths emerge. Muscles need the stress of weight training to grow and you can’t make a good sailor on a calm sea, as the saying goes.
I’ve written about purpose before too and the clarity I find in my own is the anchor that grounds me. No matter what I have done for day-to-day work, an underlying theme is found in any activity that I truly enjoy doing. Connecting people with information and inspiring them to be everything that they were created to be. If I do work that is far removed from this vocation, I get drained very quickly. When I’m doing something that sits in the centre of it, I come alive. That’s a decent yardstick of the accuracy of anyone’s statement of purpose.
The right activities for me break down into three areas:
The Vocation of the Guide: Whether assisting businesses in my daily consulting work to define their mission, vision, strategy, and the tactics to deliver them, or guiding an individual toward living their intended life, this purpose transcends specific roles. I know that in some form I am called to be a teacher, guide, mentor, and pioneer.
The Power of Words: Words – written and spoken – are definitively my medium for distilling and passing on knowledge and wisdom. I can rattle out a couple of thousand of them relatively easily and (unlike many people) find my happy place speaking in front of an audience. This is my creative act and is the highest expression of my purpose
The Role of Creation: Fulfilling the mandate to be a pioneer means transitioning from having fleeting ideas to creating a lasting body of work. For the longest time I’ve been working on a book. Two books in fact but one is almost complete. Despite the grind that it sometimes feels like, I know that the writing of it is a critical step, maybe the biggest one, on this journey of growth and transition to elderhood
So am I in the second half of my life? Chronologically, I have no idea, but experientially it really does feel like it. Life, in its finest moments, feels like a journey of transition from adherence and people-pleasing to authentic self-expression. One of developing the courage to step away from organizational obligations and to embrace the solitary path of questioning and discovery.
All of this has uncovered (maybe just dusted-off) a profound personal and professional conviction: that this hard-won wisdom – uncovering my own purpose by helping others find theirs – is the foundation for an amazing, elder future.
That Richard Bloke 