F. SCOTT FITZGERALD is credited with this famous line: “There are no second acts in American lives,” which has come to mean something like “You have only one shot at success.” He was, of course, using the three-act structure of a drama play as an analogy.
But I beg to disagree. The personal dramas of our lives need not end with the first or second act.
This is why I sometimes turn down invitations to attend gatherings of friends, peers and colleagues who have reached the golden age. I find myself wasting my cherished time, listening to people who are stuck in the past. Most of the time, they talk about themselves, their past achievements, their clout and power. I find myself asking, “Is it easier to look back into the past and harp on yesterday’s accomplishments than it is to think of tomorrow’s possibilities?”
One type that I especially try to avoid are old farts who cannot stop talking about their self-declared accomplishments in the distant past. They repeat their stories like a broken record, completely forgetting you heard them all before. At first hearing, one is awed, but it soon wears off and, at fifth hearing, it becomes irritating.
There is another type who incessantly talks about missed opportunities and might-have-beens. Worse, there are those who talk negatively about everything and about everyone.
How about this well-known personality who keeps promoting on his radio-station events, harping on about a tiresome old college rivalry year after year. He is stuck in the 1960s.
For these people, there seems to be no second acts in life. They’d rather give more attention to what they were rather than what they could become in the remaining years of their given lifetime. Do they perhaps see nothing but a dead end, and they feel more comfortable staying continuously focused on where they had been rather than where they are going? Do they feel they have run out of time anyway, and it’s useless shifting the gear to forward?
Well, I have good news! There can be a second act, third act and even a fourth act! Just stop pining over or rewinding the past; look at what you have left. There is still plenty of time to make an impact on the immediate world around you or to reinvent yourself or turn toward a new direction and find new pathways to regenerate your life.
From time and again, I revisit Gail Sheehy’s book Passages because I find it useful in mapping my life’s milestones. In that book, she marked the demarcations and descriptions of adulthood, beginning at 21 and ending at 65. She conducted hundreds of interviews and small group discussions with people who talked about the changes in their lives at every stage of life.
But 20 years after she wrote that book, she came out with a sequel entitled New Passages. The reason she was compelled to write the second book is because she discovered that life stages have changed duration, and her maps and demarcations of life’s stages have become out of date. For one thing, people are now taking much longer to die. Men and women can expect a dramatically lengthened life span. For example, it is most likely that a 60-year-old woman today can expect to see her 90th birthday. Reflecting this reality, Gail Sheehy has mapped out a completely new frontier: a second adulthood in later life.
In her recalculated stages of life, 45 is not old. It is the infancy of another life. Instead of declining, some men and women are embracing a second adulthood, which covers the ages 45 to 85 years old. It’s a new passage, a chance to do something else, a bonus time that can be used to progress into a life of deeper meaning, renewed playfulness and creativity—beyond both male and female menopause. As she describes it, it’s “a new life to live, one in which we could concentrate on becoming better, stronger, deeper, wiser, funnier, freer, sexier and more attentive to living the privileged moments.”
This is what seems to be happening to my tokayo and friend, Nick J. Lizaso. Nick is already into his 80s, and yet he is actively performing the task of president of the Cultural Center of the Philippines, going to various cities with the Philippine Philharmonic Orchestra, being invited to cultural events in Tokyo, Moscow, New York to give a talk. He is into his second wind, so to speak, and he’s loving it!
My artist friend Del used to be an art director in an ad agency. After retiring, he picked up painting again with gusto, and is now making a decent living selling his works.
In a conceptualization class I taught some time ago, one of the most enthusiastic attendees was a retired public-school teacher. She was into a short course on web-site development and was planning to take up digital animation afterwards. When I told her I admired her pluck and spirit, she just smiled and said: “For me, life is an acronym. It means ‘learning is forever.’”
So, maybe you can take a second look at that avocation or hobby which you had set aside because of your busy corporate life. Now is the time to take it up again and turn it into something you can live on. Just think. You can volunteer as a mentor of delinquent juveniles, or become a full-time advocate of senior citizen’s rights, or serve as a lay minister in your local parish church, learn the craft of photography or the science of hydrophonics, or you can invest in a new enterprise. Whatever. Just find your passion or your true calling and do it.
Experience that satisfying feeling that you get when you finally are able to shed the shell of the past and to master a new set of skills or do what you have always wanted to do. Every day becomes an awakening. This way, you will never grow old. You just keep growing.
“Today is the first day of the rest of your life.” Remember that meme we used to frame and hang in our offices? This time, feel it and really mean it. Just like a play or movie, the second or third act of your life can even be much more interesting. Instead of a whimper, end your life with a bang!