The Two Halves Of Life

THE TWO HALVES OF LIFEnBy
William Cottringer, Ph.D.

“Most of the shadows of this life are caused by our standing in our own sunshine.” ~Ralph Waldo Emerson.

From where I am standing do my looking today, there seems to be two distinct halves to my life. Of course I am interested in finding out if this as common as I think it is. During the first half of my life, I spent my time wading through a sea of chaos and building up a confident sense of self that could think and act to fix and create realities I thought I wanted.

But no matter how successful I felt or appeared to be to others, I was not genuinely content or fully satisfied that I really had what I wanted or needed in life. The grass always seemed to be greener elsewhere. And of course no matter how successful anyone is, there are always plenty of others way ahead in the reward line and you can’t help but notice that annoying bit of jealousy. So when is enough success ever enough? Probably never.

There seems to be a growing, nagging incompleteness in our minds and hearts during this first half of our life. What is missing that we finally realize, is the other half of life. This other half of life awaiting us is where we spend our time reconciling all the opposite pairs of things we divided into this or that, undoing the artificial judgments that one side of the equation is better, truer or more useful than the other, and rejoining the collective oneness that our egos and self-consciousness felt compelled to separate and alienate from during our first half of life with all its chaotic, unmanageable overload.

The second half of life is what yields the “real stuff” of true abundance in our success quest—authentic happiness, the real satisfaction that we are making a substantial difference in helping life become better for ourselves and others, genuine meaning, a solid sense of completion, intrinsic worth, undeniable truth, and soothing peace of mind. These are the things that hard work, tenacity, faith and hope finally reap as promised.

Of course it would be foolish to discount the importance of this prideful ego journey during the chaotic first half of life, or even try to speed it up with more determination, cleve
ess or hard work at restoring some simple order to things. Life happens at its own speed. You can be as impatient as you want but all that does is make patience that much more elusive and valuable, as well as more enjoyable when you finally find it only to lose it again.

And then again, the only way you can begin to see the importance and relevant value of the second half of life, is to accumulate enough experiences with both sides of the same coin, like failure and success, emptiness and fullness, fear and love, and turmoil and peace. Some of these pairs happen quickly and frequently, but some take a long time to experience. At any rate, these reconciliation experiences begin to show you how you will be spending your time in the second half of life.

The best part of this life journey, at least for me, is that I don’t have to discard, ignore or reject all that I learned from my separating and controlling ego half; I am still able to include it all with the wisdom, creativity, compassion, love, understanding and empathy that I am experiencing more of in this second half of my life. Inclusion is beginning to make more sense to me whereas I am questioning excluding behavior a lot lately.

This transition seems to be changing much of my “language” and “grammar.” All the important noun objects of my ego search—truth, love, knowledge, justice, morality, influence, prosperity and peace of mind—are quickly turning into action verbs that I am becoming, rather than just trying to think and feel them. In this sense, I often look back over my life and feel some regret about being so much of a spectator and ineffective reactor with trying to do too much and only ending up with futile failures and sad irresponsibility.

But then again, this annoying sense is what makes my current actions feel so much more meaningful, deeper and enjoyable. Becoming the means to my own noble and truthful ends, provides me with a genuine sense of wholeness that can’t occur any other way. So, in spite of appearances, things are moving along quite well.

No matter how many bruises, broken bones and bleeding we experience in the first half of life, it doesn’t really matter that much (unless they are fatal or maiming of course), because it is these past experiences that help us feel good now in this second half of life. And when they happen again, which they inevitably will as the roller coaster of life is sure to continue, they don’t feel quite so bad. We are getting used to the up and down bumpy ride.

Now of course this is all coming from someone who learned the hard way that the light at the end of my tunnel was a freight train. Sometimes I wondered if the first half of my life would ever end, but it did, so if you are still having fun in the troublesome, chaotic first half of life with all the cellophane illusions, keep your faith until you see through them to the simplicity on the other side. I didn’t even know about the second half of life back then. nn