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Beyond Halftime: Practical Wisdom for Your Second Half

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I recently re-read two of Bob Buford's books: this one as well as Halftime: Changing Your Game Plan from Success to Significance. (I correctly assumed that it would be best to read them in that sequence.) Inevitably, there are some repetitions throughout the three volumes because most of Buford's core concepts are articles of faith and he takes full advantage of every appropriate opportunity to reaffirm them. However, over the years he has revised and updated the material in new editions as his own life experiences have indicated the need to do so. In this volume, he offers practical advice in the form of "musings" about how to navigate one's way through life while acknowledging that life tends to be "messy, disorderly, one surprise after another."

One of the key issues in Buford's books is having a "purpose in life," one that (as Rick Warren has so eloquently explained) "drives" what we think, feel, and do. Buford changed purposes in what he refers to as "the second half of [his] life" (i.e. life after age 50), by which time he had learned "to embrace discomfort and to celebrate disorderliness. I have [also] learned to trust the unknown that comes with abandoning the drive to succeed." This precisely what Reinhold Niebuhr once had in mind when suggesting this prayer: "God grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change; the courage to change the things I can; and the wisdom to know the difference." In Chapter 21, Buford explains what happened when he gave a presentation to a young secular audience of business leaders and their spouses. During the Q&A session that followed, one person in the audience said, "I'm a believer in the philosophy of Ayn Rand. Her philosophy is based on selfishness, that the best way to live is to look out for yourself. What do you think about that?"

This response indicated to Buford and the values and purpose in life that he had affirmed during his presentation were not well-received. "In fact, it is probably the way that most people act in their first-half lives, a predominant `success' worldview. If that's the case, then my speaking of self-transcendence and significance followed by surrender to a higher ideal must have seemed threatening to them, and maybe to you [his reader]." Buford's point is that unless and until people are "ready" for self-transcendence, ready to initiate the process to achieve it by changing their purpose in life, they will continue (as Buford did in his own first-half life) to pursue material success. "Would the members of the audience change as they grew into a different season of life? "I wasn't sure as I mused about it."

In this context, I am reminded of a situation almost two centuries ago following a program presented by Ralph Waldo Emerson in Concord, Massachusetts, during which he had explained the benefits of transcendental meditation. Emerson agreed to answer questions and an elderly farmer raised his hand. "All that's mighty interesting, Mr. Emerson, but how do you transcend an empty stomach?" Especially now when the economy is creating so many problems for everyone and especially for second-half people, self-transcendence may not be so important as Buford suggests. That's not to suggest that it shouldn't be; rather, that it may not be.

I enjoyed sharing Buford's thoughts, feelings, and experiences in the two books. He offers hundreds of thought-provoking observations and issues to consider. In fact, there is a "Reflection" section at the conclusion of each chapter. Many second-half people now ask a question posed in a song made famous by Peggy Lee many years ago: "Is that all there is?" And no doubt many of them are saddened by the answer to it. It seems to me that one of the reasons that Buford wrote these two books is to help second-half readers to have both a sufficient and secure standard of living as well as a meaningful and sustainable quality of life, however "disordered" and "surprising" it may sometimes seem. He agrees with Tennyson's Ulysses:

"Tho' much is taken, much abides; and though
We are not now that strength which in old days
Moved earth and heaven; that which we are, we are;
One equal temper of heroic hearts,
Made weak by time and fate, but strong in will
To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield."