By Barbara Falconer Newhall
When we are young, we strive, we hope, we want, we do. We are busy with the necessary work of keeping civilization alive and ourselves afloat in it. And that’s OK.
But, says Richard Rohr, there comes a time, in the second half of life, when we realize that we are doomed to failure. Life thwarts us. Life is inherently tragic. And there is no fixing it.
And that is the moment exactly when we are ready to grow emotionally and spiritually. When we are ready to begin the second half of life.
Older people – people in that “second half” of life – will get what Rohr is talking about in his book, Falling Upwards: A Spirituality for the Two Halves of Life.
But I’m not sure that young people in the throes of defining themselves and proving their worth in a challenging world will get it. And that’s OK, too.
Falling Upward: A Spirituality for the Two Halves of Life, by Richard Rohr, Jossey-Bass, 2011, $19.95 hardcover.