The Third Half

Yes, it is a joke.

“50% of the people understand percentages. 50% do not. And 50% don’t care.”

But these days, the concept of a “Third Half of Life” is not so crazy.

Previous generations could neatly divide life into two halves.

First Half to age 30

• Birth
• Grow up
• Start work/career
• Start Family

Second Half to age 65

• Raise kids,
• Pay off home
• Welcome grandchildren
• Die

The Third Half

“Retirement” was a new stage that, if you were lucky, lasted twelve to fifteen years. When my grandfather turned 65 in 1965, the average American man lived to be 69. He lived to be 79, the start of a new trend.

Today, it is more and more common for people to be retired for 20 or 30 years.

There is a lot out there about the social and political and economic consequences of this lengthening of the average life-span, but not much about one of the most common but little-discussed consequences — Surprise.

The comedian, George Burns, expressed this surprise as he neared his 100th birthday by saying, “If I had known I would live this long, I would have taken better care of my teeth.”

Yes, yes, we should have seen this coming. We should have taken better care of ourselves and saved more. A lot of others write about that.

However, my interest is in the surprise that no one can prepare for.

Carl Jung described it this way:

Wholly unprepared,

We embark upon the second half of life. . . . 

We cannot live the afternoon of life

according to the program of life’s morning;

for what was great in the morning

will be little at evening,

and what in the morning was true

will at evening have become a lie.”

Yes, he called it the Second Half. He was born before my grandparents, after all. And I do believe this life-change sneaks up on us sometime in those years between 30 and 60. Most of us manage to ignore it until we retire. I think many of our ancestors managed to ignore it until they died. But, given how long we are living, we will suffer greatly if we try to ignore it.

In his novel, The Deer Park, Norman Mailer wrote: “There is that rule of life, so cruel and so just, that says that we must change or else pay more for staying the same.”

What are the changes you are making? What used to be true and is not anymore? What is true now that was not true when you were young? I am curious about your experience in the Third Half of Life.