Chasing Carrots

Doing It! in the second half of life, realizing what's possible.

Why do I choose sticks over carrots? Why am I compelled by the fear of consequences instead of rewards? Surely there’s more. I’ve been reading Falling Upward by Richard Rohr, a Franciscan priest. His underlying theme is that there are two halves to life. In the first half we’re consumed by building and achieving. The second is all about being if we’re willing to make a difficult transition. We must first fall in order to rise.

I choose sticks because I’ve still got a foot firmly planted in the first half (that’s why after retiring the first time I took another “part time” job). Silly me, thinking I can dictate the terms of my surrender, the loss of a carefully crafted and meticulously maintained identity. I should instead consider the greater purpose and beauty of carrots.

My quest to become more self-aware is a difficult though rewarding path. It’s only in understanding what has driven me that I’m able to step aside and choose the better path. I’ve been motivated by fear my entire life, and if you’re honest most of you have been too. Do any of these sound familiar?

• Be a super achiever or else.

• If you’re not at the table you’re on the menu.

• Get to the top of the heap or else you’ll be on the bottom.

• Accumulate things to prove worth and value.

• Do this, don’t do that.

These were inculcated deep within me early on in the first half. I was taught to memorize the Old Testament, never the Beatitudes. Thou shalt not instead of ways to blessing. I communed with sticks, not carrots.

“Laws are necessary in society and individuals to motivate good behavior, to ensure success”, justifies my logical first half brain. And indeed they were and still are. Order has its place. But while the first half teaches order, the second offers freedom from it.

A greater opportunity and yes, responsibility, now exists to push past the law. To understand a better definition of success. It’s to embrace wisdom and grace. To love myself and others. This greater responsibility propels me past performance to satisfy the intent of the law: knowing peace with God and man.

Easier said than done. Particularly so when I’m still wearing those cloudy first half lenses. Ruling oneself (and others) through threats and consequences – sticks – is not my way now. I must willingly choose to enter a second half that does not threaten, but promises rewards. Carrots.

If you think this is about being resigned to living out these happy golden years, you’ve missed the whole point. This is not a resignation but a declaration. It’s about seeing something so vast, so meaningful, that my words can’t contain it.

CS Lewis, in his writings on the Kingdom of Narnia spoke to a principle of the Kingdom of God. When the great lion Aslan led the children through and beyond that gate, they saw that the further in they traveled the bigger the place proved to be. What looked narrow and limiting from outside the gate was actually broad and expansive. So it is, says Rohr, with the second half.

Right now on the cusp and at the gate again, my second half might appear to be a diminishing of all I’ve accomplished in the first half. It’s not. From here I can see the glimmer of something worth so much more than what I may lose by stepping through the gate.

Long ago my parents abruptly sold their beloved ranch that they’d labored to build for forty years. They moved far away from their home of decades without a backward glance. Until today I never understood how they could give up what they worked so hard to build. It seemed to me that leaving behind what they had built, what they set out to do, was unthinkable.

But in retrospect I think they saw carrots. What appeared to be the loss of their dreams and purpose actually became their greatest blessing. They moved nearer to grandchildren. They planted new gardens. They let their lives just be and they were free from the weight of their dream.

Society tells us that retirement and the second half of life is a downgrade. We fear that no one will listen to us, we’ll be ashamed, useless, and cast aside. But life doesn’t have to be that way for us now. The second half can reveal in blessings what sticks never did. And anyway, most people won’t believe it and they’ll never realize (until each of them gets to this station in life himself) that for the first time, some of us no longer care.

We’re too busy chasing carrots. Carpe diem!