Are Vitality, Meaning and Purpose in Your Later Years for You?
Welcome! My blog is for you if you want vitality, meaning and purpose in your later years. My blog is still under construction but up and running, so I’m glad you’re here. I’m Carmen. (You can check my About page if you need to get a sense of who I am or what I’m about.) The “Second Half of Life” begins at age 50, but my blog could be for you if:
- you are 50 or over.
- you are 50 or under.
Well, that pretty much just leaves out toddlers, or infants who can’t read or speak yet, but you get the idea. I don’t want to exclude anyone because the benefits of conscious passage through the second half of life are deep, rewarding and healing! They can be accessed with help, at any age, whenever you are ready. I hope you are ready now to jump in at the beginning of what will unfold for enhancing your Second Half of Life.
What’s in It for Me?
- Learning to think about aging in a life enhancing, growth producing way.
- Mastering the important shifts required to turn second half problems into opportunities for
- transformation
- new meaning and purpose.
- living vitally in your elder years.
- Ability to bring an effective level of consciousness to addressing such classic second half issues as:
- retirement, the empty nest, divorce
- loss of relationships, worry about the future
- feeling trapped or stuck, loss of meaning or purpose,
- feeling “invisible” or irrelevant, loneliness,
- spirituality, coming to terms with your mortality.
- Support to overcome the inevitable resistance to leaving your comfort zone to grow.
“One cannot live the afternoon of life according to the program of life’s morning; for what was great in the morning will be little in the evening; and what in the morning was true will at evening have become a lie.” (Carl Jung in The Structure and Dynamics of the Psyche)
Transformation: Vitality, Meaning and Purpose Characterize the Second Half of Life
- It requires important shifts in approach from the first half mode to live it well.
- Despite the often negative view of aging and the aged in our culture, it is a fertile season for transformation:
- for healing
- for remaking meaning and purpose
- for responding to our soul’s deep longing
- for giving back from our accumulated experience and wisdom.
- It is a prime time for spiritual growth even as our physical abilities decline.
- It is a time for service.
- It is time to decide if God or a Higher Power exists and what my relationship will be.
“You cannot solve a problem from the same level of consciousness that created it.”
–Albert Einstein
Our culture generally values youth. It views our elder years as a period of diminishment into illness and irrelevance. At best, our culture sees the second half of our life as a period of sunset towards darkness. However, if we make a 180 degree turn, the sunset can appear as a sunrise towards light. I want to help people to realistically think positively about aging.
I like what Zalman Schachter-Shalomi says in his book From Age-ing to Sage-ing: A Profound New Vision of Growing Older.
“Our images of aging are more the problem than aging itself. Our culture views aging as a process of gradually worsening personal diminishment and disengagement from life. We need to view old age as the culminating stage of spiritual development.”
He goes on to offer us a choice between “Senior Citizen” and “Sage.” Schachter-Shalomi suggests that:
“Age-ing points to becoming a ‘senior citizen’ = a static, lifeless condition where all further organic growth has ceased. Sageing = a process that enables older people to become “spiritually radiant, physically vital and socially responsible elders of the tribe.”
Will you listen to the voice of our culture (and images in the media) or to your own inner voice in making your choice? The Second Half of Life is an opportunity for transformation, for remaking meaning and purpose and for living with vitality. I can provide the keys to unlocking the potential of the second half that our culture does not see. This requires a different approach from the first half as the above quotes from Jung and Einstein imply. I will reveal the critical differences in detail in future posts and other ways.
My blog will not only inform but will provide support for turning information into transformation, into vitality, meaning and purpose in your later years. Even if you have some health, mobility, income or other issues that can occur with aging, they need not deprive you of growth during your elder years, especially spiritual growth.
If you are interested, want to be able to be interested, or can barely imagine an old age different from the one our culture predicts, I invite you to join the caravan and see where it will take us. To somewhat paraphrase Rumi, “Come, come, whoever you are, ours is not a caravan of despair. Even if you have broken your vows a thousand times, come, and yet again, come!” Vitality, meaning and purpose in your later years beckon.