Adapting to the Best Life
Letting Go Of the Old Chapter and Embracing the Next
For it is in giving that we receive, it is in pardoning that we are pardoned, and it is in dying that we are born to eternal life. -The Peace Prayer.
I was in a large crowd moving forward, backward, and cross-wise, as people often do. They were hustling and jostling, bumping and apologizing as they pushed forward in pursuit of their lives. There was no way I could see everyone who passed by me, but an old AC/DC concert t-shirt caught my eye. It wasn’t the t-shirt itself that grabbed my attention. It was the person who wore the t-shirt proudly promoting the 80s hard rock band. The frayed collar of the shirt encircling his neck revealed the frequency of its wearing and washing over the years. His head was showing his age as well. He was seriously balding, though the greying hair he did have was, no doubt as it was when the t-shirt was new, still quite long in the back. The body of the shirt had stretched, thankfully, as it was now required to cover the paunch of a middle-aged man. The man, clearly entering the third chapter of life, was doing his best to remain in chapter one.
Now, there is nothing wrong with reliving the past…for a little while. But collected human wisdom warns us about making such nostalgia a way of life:
“He’s old enough to be her father.”
“There’s no fool like an old fool.”
“Act your age.”
The divisions of life, from child to youth to adult to old age, are not an exact science. Chapter one is the first twenty-five years of life. Chapter two is the next thirty years or so. The third chapter ends at around 75, and the fourth at 100 (or beyond if you can pull it off!). We need to adapt our lives when we transition to each of these chapters. When we adapt, it can feel like we are giving up. But we are actually simplifying and focusing our lives on the new challenges ahead.
I am 60, going on 61, so I am now fully in the third chapter of life. Honestly, I can tell. My physical age is the most obvious. I have more aches and pains. I am slower to heal. I feel the changes in my mind and emotions as well. I’m not driven the way that I was before. Some things I enjoyed are no longer interesting. Other things that have been dormant since childhood are coming to life again. But these changing “rules” of my life are unnerving.
It would be easier to play the same game I did in chapter two. Ignore the changes. Keep working on things like building my professional life. Keep saving to increase my net worth. But I’m determined to focus on the new game life has given me, to play according to those rules and have the best life possible in this chapter. Where to begin?
The previous series of four posts on the chapters of life offers a starting point, not just for my beginning in chapter three, but for all of us in every chapter of life. The following comes from my own life. I hope it will be useful to you as you focus on your goals in your chapter of life.
The first post clarifies the challenge. I have to let go of the role I played in chapter two. Over the last 30 years, this has become a huge part of my identity. I have to decide to step out of my established role in my job and my family. I’m no longer the provider and protector in the way that I have been. If I do this, a different opportunity unfolds before me. I no longer depend upon institutional metrics for a sense of well-being. In this stage of life, I develop my own metrics of success.
When I look at the people I would like to emulate in this stage of life, they have one thing in common. They have redirected much of what they’d gained in life toward supporting their loved ones. This, it seems to me, is one of the great challenges of the Christian faith. I will recommit to this in the third chapter of life. I have found just the prayer for this purpose.
The “Peace Prayer,” featured in a previous post, is my guide. It is powerful, inspiring, and succinct. Here’s how it begins:
Lord, make me an instrument of your peace:
where there is hatred, let me sow love;
where there is injury, pardon;
where there is doubt, faith;
where there is despair, hope;
where there is darkness, light;
where there is sadness, joy.
So far, in my third chapter of life, I can only pray these words. I may live them out on occasion, but it is far from my way of life. The good news, however, is that I now have the freedom to divert time and energy from merely reinforcing the circumstances I encounter in life. I can, instead, reshape those circumstances for good.
The second post on the chapters of life helps me sketch out what the third chapter will look like with my parents.
One of the great needs of people in chapter four of life is to develop a rhythm of life that strengthens their self-esteem, especially as they slowly but surely lose the ability to live independently.
I can work to develop many positive experiences with them, fun and simple things, as well as regular communication, so that difficult decisions (like giving up the car keys) are as uncontentious as possible.
Their care is not my responsibility alone. If I strengthen my relationships with other family members, including sharing and coordinating the care of our elders, we are empowered to provide support that is as friction-free as possible.
The third and fourth posts give guidance to my relationship with family and friends who are in chapters one and two of life.
I am not in competition with them. I am now the support team for their lives. I need to own my transition from chapters two and three, and focus on helping them through their stage of life.
For my son, in chapter two, that means helping him overcome life’s landmines and take on life’s challenges, as well as supporting him and his wife as their family grows.
For my younger son in chapter one (and future grandkids!), I will be on call to provide wisdom and correction as needed.
Again, I’m not alone. My wife and I can provide regular day-to-day help when our children become parents. Physically, this means offering to babysit. Emotionally, we can be people who provide a safe place for both parents and children to rest, rejoice, and even vent frustration without taking a side. Financially, we can do things like pay for family vacations and start a college fund at the birth of our grandchildren.
These goals are much more in the vein of the peace prayer; more focused on my loved ones than on my own success. But to do this, I need to work on one more goal as a preliminary: myself. It seems to me, as I pray the Peace Prayer, that the only way to walk this path consistently for others is to find a source of contentment in my life as it is in chapter three and as it will be in chapter four. As the prayer continues:
O Lord, grant that I may not so much seek
to be consoled as to console,
to be understood as to understand,
to be loved as to love…
By God’s grace, my wife and I have done pretty well in stewarding our physical, emotional, and financial lives in chapter two for retirement in chapter three. We need to continue to steward these things. But that stewardship is no longer focused on our well-being. Stewardship is more strongly focused on the lives of those around us. Our metrics move from getting more consolation, understanding, and love, to providing consolation, understanding, and love to others.
Life in chapter three has a different definition, again beautifully described by the peace prayer:
for it is in giving that one receives,
it is in self-forgetting that one finds,
it is in forgiving that one is forgiven,
it is in dying that one awakens to eternal life.
I have often wondered if I could really live this way. Chapters three and four are my opportunity to find out! As Paul puts it:
When I was a child, I talked like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child. When I became a man, I put the ways of childhood behind me. -1 Corinthians 13:11
The next step in becoming a “chapter three man”, then, is to set up my prayer book with these goals in this chapter of life! That will be the focus of next week’s post.