Spring                                                                         Planting Moon

A while back I mentioned doing work only I can do.  Part of the third phase thang.  What I meant specifically when I said that was writing Missing and the other Tailte novels, Reimagining Faith and the translation project, Ovid’s Metamorphoses.  (Yes, others may/will translate Ovid, but I’m the only one that can produce my translation, make my choices, add my commentary.)

Why is doing work only I can do important to me?  Mortality.  Coming at me now faster than ever.  Within this phase of my whole life for sure.  Individuation.  It’s taken a long time to get clear about who and what I’m for, what I’m good at and not good at.  Now’s the time to concentrate that learning, deepen it.  Fun.  Doing work I really want to do has a satisfaction level that is intrinsic.  Other satisfactions, reward may come.  Fine.  But not the focus now.  Common sense.  If I won’t do it, who will?

This notion could get gummed up in what kind of work I should do.  I should continue my long political career.  I should continue giving tours at the MIA.  I should work with the disadvantaged in some way.  I should be in the church somehow.  Well, I spent three decades following my values in my work.  And I’m glad I did.  But that kind of work has a tendency to move away from personal strengths and dreams.  Which was ok.  Which was fine.

Not now.  Now the millennials need to storm the barricades, give the sermons, teach the kids about art.  That work needs to go on, must go on in fact, but through the energy of others.

Now I need to concentrate, distill.  Work with the alchemy of the backroom rather than the chemistry of the frontroom.  It’s a different time in my life and one I need to honor.  One way I can honor my third phase is by doing work in it that only I can do.

Spring                                                                           Planting Moon

The third phase and its staggering newness, a third phase of life available now to many by virtue of health care, sanitation and public health campaigns.  A phase of life previously available only to the lucky and the strong, as Bette Midler’s the Rose sang of love.  Like love in the Rose though, the third phase is not only for the lucky and the strong, at least not anymore.

Now many, perhaps most, will live 20 years or 30 years beyond what used to be considered their expiration date of 65.  Since this was far from the norm for generations prior to ours, this time remains undiscovered country, at least insofar as it is a country of our life and not a painful preliminary to that Shakespearean, final undiscovered country.

Carl Jung, a long time spiritual adviser and guide, divided life into two phases:

““We cannot live the afternoon of life according to the programme 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.’

What is the difference between these two halves?

Jung believed that middle and old age, like youth, have specific developmental tasks. While the developmental tasks for youth involve turning outward and engaging life, the goal for the mature you is to consolidate your conscious and unconscious parts of yourself. In other words, the primary task in the first half of life is to develop and adapt to your outer world and thus fit into society. You study, find employment, form relationships and move through your life with a social cohort of like minded people. For the second half of your life the task is to adapt to your inner world; that is, to discover who you really are and then create an environment to suit your unique self.”                       from secondhalfsuccess.com

In my scheme I separate out a learning phase and a career/family phase, moving us into what Jung defines only in the third phase.  Yet his understanding of the second half and mine of the third phase mesh pretty well.

Distillation. Condensation. Authenticity. Work only I can do.