The Art of Manliness - #598： Journeying From the First to the Second Half of Life

00:00:00.000 Brett McKay here and welcome to another edition of the Art of Manliness podcast. Have you come

00:00:11.300 to a point in your life where the pursuits of your younger years no longer seem meaningful

00:00:15.040 or satisfying? Well, maybe it's time for you to transition from the first half of your life

00:00:18.620 to the second. My guest today has spent decades helping people, particularly men,

00:00:22.480 make this passage. His name is James Hollis. He's a union analyst and the author of over

00:00:26.180 a dozen books. We begin a conversation with a brief overview of what it makes union or

00:00:29.920 depth psychology unique and how it helps individuals find meaning and deal with life's

00:00:34.060 existential questions. Our discussion then explores the differences between the first and second

00:00:37.640 halves of life and how the main question of the first is what is the world asking of me

00:00:41.340 while the primary question of the second is what is my soul asking of me? Jim explains

00:00:45.700 why you need to sort through the influence of your family and culture on who you've become

00:00:49.240 and how the second half of life is about finding personal authority and sovereignty. We also

00:00:53.060 discuss why the first half of life is always a gigantic unavoidable mistake and why that's

00:00:57.320 perfectly okay. Jim explains what triggers the impetus to move from the first half to

00:01:01.200 the second half of life, how it can happen at any age, how to make the transition from

00:01:04.640 one face to the other, and why the journey to the second can be terrifying because it

00:01:08.060 lacks the structure of the first. Jim then describes the internal systems you can use

00:01:11.600 for guidance and moving forward in the absence of external structure. He then gets into the

00:01:15.380 importance of continuing to grow in your profession or marriage throughout your life. We discuss

00:01:19.140 the particular reasons men can get stuck in the first half of life and how men are more

00:01:23.280 free to tend to the needs of their souls these days, but can still feel adrift. And we end

00:01:27.380 our conversation on how you can know if you're on the right track in pursuing the task of the

00:01:31.400 second half of life. After the show's over, check out our show notes at awim.is slash second half.

00:01:45.100 All right, Jim Hollis, welcome to the show.

00:01:47.560 Thank you. It's a pleasure to be with you.

00:01:48.860 So you are a Jungian psychoanalyst, and you've written lots of books. And the one we're going

00:01:53.620 to talk about today is Finding Meaning in the Second Half of Life, How to Finally Really Grow

00:01:58.180 Up. Before we do that, let's give a little bit of background on Jungian psychology without getting

00:02:02.800 too technical or theoretical about it. What were the big issues that Jung was trying to address

00:02:08.620 with his framework of psychology?

00:02:11.200 Well, I think the thing that distinguished Jung perhaps most of all was his emphasis on the human

00:02:18.020 being as a meaning-seeking, meaning-creating individual. And more individuals suffer when

00:02:23.500 they're disconnected from meaning in their life than any other single cause, more than all the

00:02:27.640 environmental wounds that life brings us. And he frequently emphasized that we remember that the

00:02:34.580 word psyche really means soul. And most modern psychology fractionates human beings into behaviors,

00:02:41.560 which of course we are, cognitive processes, which we do every moment, and biological processes,

00:02:48.540 because we do have bodies. And all of that is useful and helpful, but it still doesn't sum the

00:02:54.100 whole person. And the whole person is at heart a mystery. And there are so many autonomous processes

00:03:00.320 in each of us that are constantly in some way critiquing our lives. And the real effort is to try to

00:03:07.280 undertake a dialogue with those other elements that are making choices for us. And of course,

00:03:12.900 you know, the problem with the unconscious is it's unconscious, so we can't say very much about it.

00:03:17.260 And yet, so much of it keeps spilling into the world on a daily basis, harming our children,

00:03:22.360 ourselves, or partners, or whomever. And so it's about a kind of accountability to one's own

00:03:30.560 psychological reality and a responsibility for what spills into the world through us. And an effort

00:03:37.740 to dialogue with the depths of the human soul and the psyche. And also to recognize that if we're in

00:03:47.240 a meaningful relationship to our own souls, then we can go through difficult times, we can suffer,

00:03:54.540 we can experience conflict and defeat, and still feel the rightness of our lives.

00:03:59.320 But on the other hand, we can do all the right things as defined by our family of origin or our

00:04:04.480 popular culture. And there's something empty and aching inside. And the internal satisfaction is

00:04:10.580 registered symptomatically. So I could do all the right things, for example, and feel the emptiness

00:04:16.620 of it or feel depressed or been self-medicating or whatever. So all of those are really reminders

00:04:24.080 that we have to pay attention to something very deep within us that is our natural wisdom and is

00:04:31.480 seeking to communicate with us. And on a daily basis is critiquing things. And it might make sense

00:04:37.220 once in a while to stop and pay attention to that.

00:04:39.760 So I think this is useful. So it sounds like what Jungian or depth psychology, these are answering

00:04:44.260 existential questions about life itself. So I think the example of depression is a good one to sort of

00:04:49.980 differentiate the different types of psychology because you've been talking about that. So

00:04:53.300 depression, we do know that there's a physiological aspect to it and you can use medicine to treat it.

00:04:59.220 There's also a cognitive aspect to it. So you can do things like cognitive behavioral therapy,

00:05:03.200 where you change the way you think about an issue. So you're not thinking negatively all the time.

00:05:08.340 But what you're saying with depth psychology or Jungian psychology is doing is looking at

00:05:12.600 depression from an existential point of view and saying,

00:05:14.820 maybe there's something more to that depression besides a cognitive or physiological thing. This

00:05:21.060 is actually could be, you're just depressed because you feel existentially adrift and depth

00:05:26.700 psychology addresses that. Sure. One of the ways to look at this is to ask the question,

00:05:32.800 why is it that I in my best lights am still experiencing a depression? Why has my psyche autonomously

00:05:41.100 withdrawn its approval and support? And I'll use a personal example myself. When I was in my early

00:05:47.380 to mid thirties, I had achieved all my goals. I'd done all the things that I felt I was supposed to do

00:05:53.000 and had been successful with them. And yet I felt this deep depression. And it's the thing that sent me

00:06:01.260 into my first hour of personal therapy. It didn't sound to me like I was beginning the second half of life

00:06:07.340 and it didn't feel like a great moment in my life. It felt rather like a defeat of some kind.

00:06:13.160 And at the same time, it was the beginning of a different kind of journey and a different kind

00:06:17.780 of question because I think I, as most people had sort of picked up from my culture, what my task was,

00:06:25.120 what the assignments were, how to win approval, a chase that elusive goddess success. And it had led me

00:06:32.500 further and further for myself. And it was really the beginning of the second half of life kind of

00:06:38.160 journey, which is quite a different journey than the first half of life. So the real question is,

00:06:43.260 if my psyche is not thrilled with the executive functions coming down from the top floor,

00:06:51.600 what might the psyche ask of me? And frankly, we will avoid that kind of question.

00:06:57.360 We will tend to ramp up our previous efforts and the depression will only get more pronounced.

00:07:05.220 It's kind of like, again, digging yourself a hole and realize, oh my goodness, I'm in a hole. But the

00:07:10.140 tool you have in your hand is a shovel. So you work harder and the hole gets deeper. And then you have

00:07:15.780 to realize that this is not the way that I have to begin to reframe this situation. What is the soul

00:07:23.960 asking of me? And I know soul is one of those words that can be sort of new agey or woo woo, but it's

00:07:30.880 really a word that is trying to point to the essential mystery of the human personality.

00:07:36.660 And it's something profoundly elusive and yet omnipresent in our lives. And as a result, again,

00:07:43.800 is our constant companion. And the only question is, what kind of relationship do we have with that

00:07:48.980 companion? Is it hostile, estranged, repressed, or is it conversational? And that makes a huge

00:07:55.340 difference in a person's life.

00:07:57.440 So it sounds like if anyone's had that moment where they're lying in bed at night, staring at the

00:08:01.100 ceiling, wondering, what am I doing with my life? They are doing death. They're on the steps of death

00:08:07.020 psychology.

00:08:08.400 Absolutely. They're asking the right question. Because in the first half of life, one could say,

00:08:14.100 and this is somewhat of an overgeneralization, but I think it's true. We all have to sort of

00:08:18.420 address, what is the world asking of me? You know, what do my parents want? What do the school

00:08:23.040 teachers want? What does the employer want? What does your partner want? I mean, what is the task

00:08:28.920 that my environment is speaking to me? And we throw ourselves into it in good faith. And that's

00:08:34.960 important. It helps build enough ego strength. And it builds enough sort of maturation and hopefully

00:08:41.800 personal accountability that allows us to ask those questions later when the bottom seems to fall

00:08:49.540 out. So you're right. It's at three in the morning, the hour of the wolf is called, that one often is

00:08:55.740 stricken with the sense of futility or sense of emptiness or basic fear. And out of that can come

00:09:04.060 a different life. It's not necessarily something we want to do. It's something that life is asking of us.

00:09:09.880 So in my own case, I think I probably just worked harder to avoid that encounter. So the depression

00:09:17.440 had to intensify until it finally got my attention. So let's talk about this, go into detail about the

00:09:25.240 first half and second half of life. So you just mentioned first half of life. This is when we're

00:09:29.480 building up. This is when we do the things we think we're supposed to be doing. Go to school,

00:09:33.640 get a job, get married, have a family, buy a house, etc. Yes, yes. Yeah. And it's about ego building. I

00:09:41.480 don't mean egotism. I mean, building your sense of your conscious identity. You know, we have to leave

00:09:47.300 our parents. We have to step in the world. We have to take on the tasks. And the person who doesn't do

00:09:52.920 that, who's avoiding that, is going to pay the piper down the line sooner or later. But we have to step

00:09:58.840 into the world. And it has been suggested by others that it's a kind of ego world axis. What is the

00:10:05.840 world asking of me? And can I mobilize my resources, my sense of discipline, or my willingness to pay my

00:10:14.900 dues legitimately in order to meet those tasks? And that's part of growing up. And if a truck ran over

00:10:21.560 us on our 25th or our 30th birthday, we could say, well, the person died young. But they sort of did

00:10:26.900 what they were supposed to do. They entered the world. But then again, the autonomy of the psyche

00:10:33.420 begins to manifest later. And we have to remember, first of all, we're living so much longer than any

00:10:40.240 time in human history. And Jung asked the question, a very obvious question, if we have served our social

00:10:47.140 function, perhaps reproduce the species, etc., why are we still here? What's the task in the rest of that

00:10:55.060 journey? And that's a different kind of agenda. And then the axis of conversation in some way has to

00:11:03.420 turn just from ego to world, but ego to the self, capital S, meaning that interior intelligence that is

00:11:11.160 seeking our developmental agendas. And to ask another kind of question, and what is wanting expression

00:11:19.060 through me? That's quite different than what does the world want? And then the question is,

00:11:23.960 all right, what is it that my own soul is asking of me? And that can lead to some very difficult choices

00:11:31.200 in life. It can lead to new directions in life. It can lead to the ending of something and the beginning of

00:11:36.980 something else. And that in-between time is very difficult. One of the first books I wrote was called

00:11:42.600 The Middle Passage, because I realized that the folks I was seeing after I'd returned from training

00:11:48.000 in Zurich had different presenting situations, different life histories, different sort of

00:11:53.560 ways of seeing their lives. But one thing was in common, and that was their understanding of self

00:11:59.500 and world, their psychological roadmap, if you will, had played out. It was exhausted and wasn't working.

00:12:06.620 And something better hadn't appeared on the horizon. And so I thought, well, you know,

00:12:13.120 that's what a passage is. A passage is where something dies, and something else is wishing

00:12:18.980 expression, but you're in that terrible in-between. And part of the task of therapy, certainly,

00:12:26.320 is to hold together the fragments. In other words, you still go to your job, you still take care of

00:12:31.580 your children. You still tend to the tasks of legitimate summons of the outer world. And at the

00:12:38.060 same time say, but I also have to start turning within and saying, all right, what is calling me

00:12:43.700 here? What is beckoning me? Or why this internal discord? And so the whole notion of a passage in

00:12:51.680 the middle of our lives, we know something about the adolescent passage of leaving home and getting a

00:12:57.400 big body and stepping into big roles. Assuming I've left my parents and their mistakes behind,

00:13:02.940 I'm only out there unconsciously repeating them or running from them or trying to fix them, but I'm

00:13:08.660 never free of them. And again, that tends to dominate the first half of life chronologically,

00:13:14.140 but then the second half is where I have to ask, all right, where do I go now? Whither goest I?

00:13:21.180 You know, and that can be a very humbling and frightening encounter because for a while we

00:13:28.000 don't know. And not everybody's in therapy, of course, and people may say, oh, well, well, this

00:13:33.060 hasn't occurred to me, but it often does in ways of which they're unaware. And this is not necessarily

00:13:40.300 to be tied to one's chronological age, for example. Sometimes it hits people full in the face when their

00:13:47.940 marriage breaks up or when they're forcibly downsized at work or when they're aging and have

00:13:55.340 to face an illness or they've lost a partner or forced to retire. And then you realize how much

00:14:01.360 that other relationship or that job was carrying their sense of self for them. And now that that

00:14:08.740 is no longer there to carry it for them on behalf of them, where does it go? It falls back into

00:14:14.640 one's own psyche, either as a depression or as a kind of panic. So the passage occurs when it occurs.

00:14:21.940 And I've seen people go through it in their 60s and 70s, for example. Again, not tied chronologically,

00:14:28.720 but it's whenever we are obliged to take our life seriously in a new way and set off in a new direction.

00:14:37.040 So I know that many of our listeners are in their 20s, so they're like in the middle of this

00:14:41.440 first half of life. And something that I thought was very useful in your book is that you describe

00:14:46.400 the influence that one's family, peers, and culture have on you in this first half of life.

00:14:52.440 And I guess this is what Jung would call complexes, right?

00:14:55.400 Sure, sure. Complexes are not necessarily bad things. Complexes are expressions of the fact that we have a history.

00:15:02.700 So, for example, to choose the literal, let's say when you start to cross a street, there's a

00:15:09.320 reflexive response in you that looks left and right. You might be thinking about something else,

00:15:13.340 but you tend to do that. That's a protective complex. It's designed by your history to be

00:15:18.800 protective to you. We have other clusters of history. And think of complexes as clusters of our history.

00:15:25.120 When triggered, they have the power to come up and take over the ego structure and enact their

00:15:32.480 old program. That's why we have these repetitions in our lives. And so we think when we're young

00:15:38.820 and setting, let's say if I'm a 21-year-old or 22-year-old, I just graduated from college and so

00:15:43.620 forth, and I'm setting off in my life and I'm doing all the things I'm supposed to do,

00:15:47.880 I think, well, I've left that world behind. And yet, we know upon visioning it later,

00:15:56.800 we were either repeating those patterns or we were running from them. Whenever a person says,

00:16:03.400 oh, I don't want to be like my mother or I don't want to repeat my father's life,

00:16:07.200 you know, we're still living reactively rather than out of some directive core. Or thirdly,

00:16:12.900 we'll be out there trying to fix it somehow, trying to stay busy, trying to stay unconscious,

00:16:16.960 self-medicating, whatever. Those are the kinds of recognitions that we have that, you know,

00:16:24.540 in some way, we're still in some way captive to whatever the messages are. Not to even forget for

00:16:31.480 a moment the powers of popular culture to define what does it mean to be successful? What does success

00:16:36.380 mean? Well, we have all kinds of definitions in our exterior environment, but what if they're not

00:16:42.600 in accord with, you know, what if your idea of being successful is to make a lot of money? So go

00:16:47.940 ahead and do that and see if that really works. Because we know tons of people who've made tons

00:16:53.040 of money and they're often very emptied souls or they're often people who are doing a lot of

00:16:58.900 self-medicating or always wills the risk and always looking for some new distraction.

00:17:04.400 So it's in those moments that you begin to realize, all right, sooner or later, in other words,

00:17:08.960 if I were 2021 listening to this, I would say, well, what do I do to avoid this? I don't know,

00:17:14.520 to tell you the truth. It's like, go out, make your choices, live your life, but once in a while

00:17:20.700 surface and say, you know, where am I really? What does this really feel like inside of me?

00:17:28.380 What's going on here? Does this feel like it's really about me or is it about me still trying to

00:17:34.660 prove something? And, you know, when you're young, you have to go out and I've said to people,

00:17:41.360 you know, look, the first half of life, speaking very loosely, is pretty much a gigantic, unavoidable

00:17:45.820 mistake. And they laugh because they think I'm making fun of it, but I'm not. It's like, go live

00:17:51.600 your life, create a life, make mistakes, but then try to figure them out and then realize, okay,

00:17:59.140 life is to some degree experimentation. But then you realize, okay, I tried this job. I mean,

00:18:04.300 many times people worked very hard in school or to prepare for a certain profession or something.

00:18:09.000 And I mean, I've worked with so many very unhappy lawyers, for example, or a number of frazzled

00:18:15.520 doctors or a number of other people who worked hard to achieve a professional identity. And then in

00:18:22.080 the end, they find themselves burnt out or they find themselves utterly bored with what they're doing.

00:18:27.360 And it's not that they did something wrong. It's that they were serving an agenda that was not

00:18:33.520 appropriate for the rest of their journey. And rather than see this as a huge disappointment

00:18:39.260 and defeat, one has to say, all right, it is what it is. It was what it was. And now I have to figure

00:18:45.840 out what the next journey is about. And that could be a tremendous opportunity for redefining oneself

00:18:53.220 and for taking new directions. And the biggest project, frankly, the second half of life is the

00:18:59.480 recovery of personal authority. You know, we have it when we're children. It's called instinct.

00:19:05.040 But we're tiny, dependent, vulnerable, afraid, have to sort of fit into the circumstances of our

00:19:11.520 family or the world around us. And, you know, we trade it away every day. And the second half of life is

00:19:18.620 finding personal authority and living it. And personal authority means sorting through

00:19:22.980 an extraordinary amount of traffic that flows through us at any given moment. I mean, it's

00:19:29.220 busier in there than LAX at rush hour. And the question is, all right, where are those voices

00:19:35.360 coming from? And which one's coming from my own soul? And which ones are coming from my family origin?

00:19:43.000 Where is it coming from my popular culture? I mean, that's a sorting process that goes on.

00:19:47.580 And the entire length of one's life, because the day I don't pay attention to that,

00:19:53.100 then there's a good chance that I'm on automatic pilot again. And I'm serving one of those inherited

00:19:58.480 voices. And then secondly, having discerned something that really you feel is right for you,

00:20:05.680 then have the courage to live it and to live it over time with whatever costs come to you.

00:20:11.680 Because that's how you get your life back again. I think the second half of life is sort of

00:20:15.660 getting your life back again. Meaning taking some ownership of it and achieving a greater sense of

00:20:21.800 personal sovereignty and personal integrity.

00:20:25.860 Well, as you're describing, when you said that the first half of life is,

00:20:28.900 you can kind of sum it up as an unavoidable big mistake we all have to go through.

00:20:32.980 I know Jung was, he uses myth a lot. And when you talked about that, it reminded me of the Buddha,

00:20:38.620 the story of the Siddhartha, where he tried the life of gluttony and whatever, and that didn't work

00:20:46.080 out. And then he tried extreme asceticism. That didn't work. And then he finally reached enlightenment.

00:20:50.760 Sure. And it's very interesting, if I remember correctly, he was living in this pleasure palace

00:20:58.580 that his very indulgent parents created for him until he was 28. And one day he wandered out into

00:21:05.340 the world for the first time, and he saw what I think they call the four passing sites. And he saw

00:21:10.640 a beggar, and he realized for the first time there's want. He saw a person who was afflicted with pain,

00:21:17.500 and he realized for the first time the body could be a source of suffering. He saw a wandering monk,

00:21:23.660 and he realized for the first time there was potentially a life of the spirit in addition to

00:21:27.680 that of the body. And he saw a corpse, and he realized for the first time that there's such a thing

00:21:32.680 as mortality. And it absolutely overwhelmed his system, as we know. And then he wandered for seven

00:21:40.320 days, seven years, rather, as you just mentioned, exploring all kinds of options until he reached

00:21:45.520 some kind of enlightenment. And his basic enlightenment was, you know, the chief cause

00:21:51.640 of human suffering is the management system the ego has achieved. Maybe it worked hard to achieve,

00:21:58.380 but it's that that gets one into trouble over and over and over. In Jung's memoir,

00:22:04.220 Memories, Dreams, and Reflections, he frequently says in his own self-exploration of midlife,

00:22:10.380 well, here's another thing I didn't know about myself, and it felt like a defeat.

00:22:13.940 Well, why would it feel like a defeat if you've learned something important about yourself? Well,

00:22:19.360 it's because the ego's invested in its own fantasy of sovereignty. I know who I am. I have enough

00:22:25.260 knowledge to make proper choices. I'm doing the right things. I'm a smart guy, et cetera, et cetera.

00:22:31.200 And then, you know, life shows up and pokes a hole in that. And those humbling experiences are the

00:22:39.000 ones where we most begin to learn and find different directions.

00:22:43.020 We're going to take a quick break for your word from our sponsors.

00:22:46.660 And now back to the show. So you mentioned this passage from the first half to second half. There's

00:22:51.740 no chronological age to it, but rather it's usually an event that draws them to that passage. Does it

00:22:58.840 have to be, does there have to be an event? Like you have to lose a job, you have to lose a loved

00:23:02.440 one for that to happen? Okay. No. Well, let me just mention, for example, in, I think it was 1884,

00:23:09.880 85, Tolstoy published a novella called The Death of Ivan Ilyich. And that's a name in Russian that

00:23:15.900 means something like John Johnson. So it was meant to be an everyman sort of story. And this is a guy

00:23:20.940 who, it's worth your reading. It's a story of a guy who did all the right things. He went to the

00:23:27.100 right school, lived in the right neighborhood, married the right person, espoused the right social and

00:23:31.420 political values, was a lawyer and then became a judge and was rising the system and everything.

00:23:37.840 And he was just following the script as faithful as he could. Then one day there's a pain in his

00:23:43.700 side that just doesn't go away. And to shorten the story, it basically, he finds that he has a terminal

00:23:49.740 illness. And for the first time in his life, he begins to question things. So in that story,

00:23:57.060 it's an event, it's an illness of substantial proportions. Sometimes for people, it's just a

00:24:05.020 growing sense of the exhaustion of the game plan of the first half of life. I mean, look, in fairness,

00:24:13.200 we set off thinking we could do this particular job for 50 years. Well, human psyche is mobile and

00:24:23.060 fluid. And it very quickly, I think, wants to move on. The human psyche wants two things.

00:24:31.480 It wants a fuller expression of its own possibilities and it wants self-healing. And to serve those

00:24:37.880 functions, it's going to, again, withdraw approval and energy. It's very rare that you can find a person

00:24:45.960 truly excited about his work after many years. And those who do are lucky they found a particular

00:24:53.780 passion. Henry Moore, the sculptor, was still sculpting into his eighth decade. And he said,

00:25:00.640 well, I just found a passion so great I couldn't ship it all the way. And that's wonderful. But we

00:25:06.080 have to remember, passion comes from the Latin passio. That means to suffer. So he was saying,

00:25:11.000 I'm right, this is something that I feel so deeply that it actually hurts to do it and hurts not to do

00:25:17.520 it. But the experience of doing it is profoundly meaningful. I spend my life with a hammer and

00:25:24.620 chisel and pounding stone. That's not an easy life, but it's meaningful for me. And so underneath all of

00:25:33.000 that is really the question, what is the psyche's opinion about this? And that's what sooner or later

00:25:39.280 has to knock on the door loudly enough, which is why typically we get these intimations all along

00:25:45.800 the way. We even have them in the first half of life, but we're so busy serving the external agendas

00:25:52.840 and our goals, and often quite legitimately in doing that. But also, there's a certain kind of vested

00:26:00.080 interest in not stopping very long to look. Satchel Paige said once, don't look back, something might be

00:26:05.680 gaining on you. Well, something is always gaining on us. And that's a certain kind of accountability to our

00:26:12.000 own deeper lives.

00:26:14.540 One of the things when you describe the first half of life, one of the nice things about it is that there is a

00:26:18.640 structure, there's a framework, like you know what to do, right? There are things you can do, and you know that

00:26:23.180 you are doing the thing you're supposed to do. The second half of life doesn't seem there's that same sort of

00:26:28.460 structure.

00:26:29.220 That's right. That's right.

00:26:30.500 So how do you go about navigating that second half of life when you have no clue on what you're

00:26:35.340 supposed to be doing?

00:26:36.660 That's right. Yeah. And that can be terrifying. It's also known as freedom. It's an opportunity for

00:26:44.220 new exploration, new trial and error. But also, I mean, I've had so many people say to me something

00:26:51.780 like, well, I always want to do this or that. And there's always a but, you know, I had to pay for

00:26:58.340 this, had to go do that, had the kids to deal with, this kind of thing. They're all good reasons.

00:27:04.680 But in the end, they serve as excuses for not having been faithful to what was looking for

00:27:11.140 expression through us. That's why I said the central question of the second half of life is not what

00:27:15.820 does the world want? It's what does the soul want? And another way of looking at that is what is

00:27:20.600 looking for expression in the world through me? That can be a career, for example, or a line of

00:27:27.820 employment. But that's not, it's usually not that narrow. It's like stepping into your own

00:27:33.980 personhood because that's the person. This is not self-indulgence. This is serving yourself.

00:27:39.340 There's a difference. That's the person you will share with your partner. That's the person you

00:27:43.780 share with your children, your neighbors, your society. You know, Jung said, you know,

00:27:49.440 individuation, which he didn't mean narcissism or individualism. He said it's about serving what's

00:27:56.460 wanting expression through you. And he says that that means at times withdrawing from the

00:28:01.800 collective, which creates a kind of debt, he said. And that debt is paid for by returning

00:28:08.720 a more evolved person to your relationships and to your society. And that's why, in a sense,

00:28:14.920 it's the greatest gift to our society for you to become who you are. Again, not in service

00:28:21.160 to narcissistic interests or self-absorption, it usually will call for sacrifice, courage,

00:28:27.300 and persistence over time. But that's who you become. And that's something that's, frankly,

00:28:34.500 rolling fewer problems into the next generation.

00:28:38.800 Well, you mentioned, you know, freedom is terrifying. I think Eric Fromm, he wrote that book,

00:28:42.380 Escape from Freedom, right? Whenever you actually have the chance to be freed, I think a lot of people

00:28:46.920 have that tendency to, oh, I'm going to go back to that first half of life structure because that's,

00:28:50.420 I'm comfortable with that.

00:28:51.260 Of course.

00:28:51.640 Yeah. So, I mean, what...

00:28:52.740 Yeah, of course.

00:28:53.360 So, how do you manage that? Like, when you deal with patients who, you know, they're asking those

00:28:57.280 questions and they're on that precipice, but then they want to retreat, like, how do you move forward?

00:29:05.140 Well, there has to be, again, enough internal discord. People don't just come into my office because

00:29:10.900 they were in the neighborhood, thought they'd talk to a total stranger. It's, there has to be some

00:29:15.740 bug inside of them, some irritation in the membrane that's trying to become the pearl here.

00:29:23.580 There has to be some suffering of some kind. And then you have to say, all right, now let's pay

00:29:30.660 attention to the systems that you do have, the systems we all learned necessarily to override.

00:29:37.600 First of all is the feeling function. You say, well, everybody knows about their feelings, right?

00:29:42.000 Well, stop and think for a moment. Feelings are not something we create. Feelings are autonomous,

00:29:49.520 qualitative evaluations of how our life is going by the psyche. What we do from an ego standpoint is

00:29:57.540 we pay no attention to them. We anesthetize them. We project them onto other people. Feelings are not

00:30:03.740 created by us. They occur. So, you stop and pay attention. If you really at times stop and ask,

00:30:10.640 how do I really feel about this? And I have to say really, because you can't trust the first

00:30:16.600 responses. They're going to be filtered through the complexes. They're going to be protective or

00:30:21.240 avoidant or deflective. How do I, I mean, you sit with that. How do I really feel about that?

00:30:27.460 Then you realize your feeling function draws you toward certain directions or courses in your life.

00:30:34.220 You know, secondly is energy systems. We can mobilize our energy and we do, and we have to,

00:30:40.300 and that's fortunate. But if you keep expending energy in the wrong direction, it's going to lead

00:30:47.200 to that boredom and then to burnout. You remember Joseph Campbell said, once you spend your life

00:30:52.060 trying to climb the ladder and then you realize you placed your ladder against the wrong wall. Well,

00:30:56.120 you spend a lot of energy going up the ladder, but, you know, then you realize, oh, this is not

00:31:01.140 where I was supposed to be going. So, energy systems ultimately are clues. When we're doing what's

00:31:07.240 right for us, this, the energy systems are there. In other words, when, when I'm doing what is right

00:31:14.520 for me, I am flooded with that supportive energy. And when I'm doing what's wrong, I, I have to be

00:31:20.900 working against my own grain. My wife has been a painter, for example, and, and I've seen her lost,

00:31:27.140 so to speak, in the canvas. And it's almost like she doesn't know where she is. And that's good,

00:31:31.720 because she's, she's in the grip of that energy and it can carry her. Or there are times when I've

00:31:37.760 been doing something like writing or, or working with someone. I have no sense of time because the

00:31:42.980 energy is there. The flow is there. Thirdly, we have dreams. We average six dreams per night,

00:31:48.220 which is a lot of activity. Nature doesn't waste energy. It's trying to communicate with us. And I

00:31:53.420 know most people are going to say, well, I don't listen, pay attention to my dreams, or I don't remember

00:31:57.400 and what, well, if you pay attention, you'd be surprised if we live to be 80 years old, six years

00:32:03.540 of our lives, six years will be spent dreaming. That's an extraordinary amount of activity. And I'll

00:32:10.100 guarantee you over time, if a person really pays attention to dreams and, and is humble enough to,

00:32:17.460 to be open to them, they, they offer critiques, they offer correctives, and I can be doing all the

00:32:24.120 right things. And then my dream life is, is telling me the opposite. And then I'd better start paying

00:32:28.860 attention to, to something else that I've, I've discarded up to that point. And then of course,

00:32:33.800 fourthly is that, that issue that we touched on before, and that's meaning. If what I'm doing

00:32:38.800 is, is perhaps difficult, but I experienced it as meaningful, you know, that's the payoff.

00:32:45.600 I've often thought, you know, happiness is not the goal of life. We're, we're told that you're

00:32:50.600 supposed to be happy. Well, who said you're supposed to be happy? You're, you're, you're

00:32:54.200 here to be here as, as a, as yourself, as a, as authentic a person as you could be. And, and

00:33:01.420 that sometimes is not going to fit into the world, or that's, that's not going to be pleasing

00:33:06.120 to everybody, maybe not even pleasing to you, but it also feels right. It feels authentic so

00:33:12.600 that your, your identity, your standpoint, your, your activities, your investments, your choices

00:33:18.900 are in some way, experiences meaningful. In other words, I, I can't imagine anything more

00:33:25.440 meaningful than sharing people's personal journeys in the way in which I'm privileged to do it as an

00:33:31.180 analyst. I don't find it enjoyable. I, I find it painful. I find it the sort of thing that can wake

00:33:38.720 me in the middle of the night as, as I continue to process it. But I, I find it so meaningful

00:33:43.600 that, that I, that I, I'm privileged to do it. And the day that arrives when it's no longer

00:33:48.700 meaningful, I'll, I'll do something else with my life. There's different aspects of your life

00:33:52.920 that are going to be affected as you make that transition to the second half. One you talk about

00:33:56.680 in your book is your career. Some people, they reach their fifties towards the end of their career

00:34:01.380 and they realize I've been doing the wrong thing my entire life. How do you, how does someone deal

00:34:07.140 with that? And how do they make that transition to have the courage to like do what the thing that

00:34:11.060 their soul says they need to do? Well, again, I want to emphasize the first half of life isn't

00:34:17.780 wrong. It's what seemed to be best at the time. So we need to, uh, accept ourselves and forgive

00:34:24.320 ourselves perhaps. But, but then the real question is what, what, what is the path of growth for me?

00:34:31.520 You know, uh, you said, once we all walk in shoes too small for us, which is his way of saying we,

00:34:37.340 we live cautious and timid lives and lives defined by our histories, where is your developmental

00:34:43.880 agenda? Where do you need to grow? What's going to be challenging to you? What's going to take you

00:34:49.980 to a different place in your own psyche that could be within the same work, let's say, but looked at

00:34:56.240 or approached from a completely different angle. And sometimes it needs to go in an entirely different

00:35:01.600 direction altogether. My first of half of life, I was a college professor and I enjoyed it very much.

00:35:07.420 What was, what was still appealing to me was teaching. So I've continued teaching, but I left

00:35:12.680 behind teaching 18 year olds and it wasn't anything wrong with being 18. It's just that there was a

00:35:18.440 conversation that's a possible at 40 to 70 or 80 that is not necessarily possible at 18. So I realized

00:35:25.060 I was spending my time teaching and conversing with people that was not necessarily appropriate

00:35:31.540 for the second half of life, which is one of the reasons I made the transition to being a therapist.

00:35:36.260 I still teach, I still write and, and, and so forth. And at the same time, you know, it's,

00:35:42.780 it's a different kind of conversation. So sometimes it calls for a radical change. Sometimes it's simply

00:35:48.920 adjustments within the system. We also have to raise that question, which you may or may not want to

00:35:54.440 talk about, but that is relationships. People will often make commitments out of their particular

00:35:59.640 psychology and say at 20 or 25. And then of course, as they evolve and change, then, then they'll ask

00:36:06.380 themselves, why am I with this person or how well is this working out? And that can lead to some very

00:36:12.400 painful conversations as we all know. In the old days, I used to do a lot of couples work. And

00:36:18.700 the real question is, can a couple evolve in a direction that is mutually growing and developing?

00:36:27.380 Because if it isn't, it's going to be miserable for both of them. And are both parties capable of

00:36:33.980 that? Rather than serve a kind of fusion model, like, all right, you and I will just fuse and become

00:36:40.480 a whole person. The model for the second half of life is kind of an open-ended structure, almost like a

00:36:46.300 Japanese wok that you would cook in. You know, it's open-ended that supports the growth and

00:36:51.060 development of both parties. And when that's there, it's terrific. It's wonderful. Everybody's

00:36:56.620 developmental process is served. And, and, and when one person is stuck and it blocks the other

00:37:03.800 person, it can be very, very difficult as we all know. So I know you've written about men before

00:37:08.500 specifically, and the way you described the first half of life about ego building, seems like men would

00:37:13.220 be really into this sort of thing, success, career, family, like, I mean, what is, what does that first

00:37:18.880 half of life look like for men and the people you've dealt with, the clients you've had?

00:37:24.320 Well, you know, I've, I've focused primarily on the, well, let me just mention when I first started

00:37:30.040 my practice back in the 1970s, the ratio of clients that I saw was nine women to one man. Today,

00:37:38.220 it's the reverse, nine men to one woman. And it's not because I advertise as such, it's, it's, that's

00:37:45.600 who's showing up. And I, I think it's indicative for men that more and more men realize, you know,

00:37:52.280 we're in trouble. This is a species in trouble and, and it's more acceptable today to, to in some way

00:38:00.500 undertake that kind of inquiry with a therapist than, than it seemed to be decades ago. But, but for men,

00:38:06.820 that's right, many men are stuck. And when you see a man still stuck in the second half of life with

00:38:12.920 thinking it's about making more money or being, you know, having more ribbons on your chest or

00:38:16.920 whatever it is, that's a person who's still caught in a delusion. And he's going to have some serious

00:38:21.940 appointments with his own mortality and aging when the time comes. One of the ways I I've put it when

00:38:27.780 I've spoken with women's groups who have on occasion asked me to talk about, well, tell us about those 0.96

00:38:33.860 crazy people called men. I say, try to imagine three things. First of all, cut away from your

00:38:41.000 life, your close friends. Women always have close friends with whom they can share their deepest

00:38:46.580 concerns and desires and fears and what's going on in their marriage and their body and their

00:38:51.820 children and so forth. Those people are gone. They're banished forever. Secondly, sever your

00:38:57.860 connection to whatever is your source of guidance and insight within you, call it your instinct or

00:39:05.300 call it your intuition, whatever you call it, that that's severed. And thirdly, your worth as a person

00:39:11.720 will be defined by meeting external standards of productivity, productivity standards created by

00:39:19.000 total strangers you'll never meet. And when women hear that, they're horrified. And I say, if you could

00:39:24.200 imagine those three things, first of all, try to imagine how isolating that is. Try to imagine how

00:39:31.140 lonely that is. Try to imagine how self-estranging that is. And that's the condition of most men.

00:39:38.260 And invariably, their attitude softens and most of them have said, well, how can we help? And the answer

00:39:43.540 is they can't. It's up to us as men to begin to challenge some of the things that we live with

00:39:51.100 or some of our own attitudes. So, you know, in looking with men, I think when I wrote a book

00:39:57.420 years ago called Under Saturn's Shadow, and it was a reference to the mythological history of fathers

00:40:04.020 and sons in which the fathers were devouring the sons and the sons were trying to kill the father.

00:40:08.660 It was all about competition and winners and losers. And there was nothing there about support and love

00:40:14.740 and cooperation and true mentoring. And so, when I wrote that and put it out there, I was touched, astonished,

00:40:24.120 humbled by the number of men who wrote from around the world, the Australian Outback and Japan and places

00:40:32.060 like that, saying, I always thought there was something wrong with me, but in a sense, this helps me understand

00:40:38.800 myself as a man. And I was just impressed again with the incredible loneliness of most men. Most men may have a

00:40:47.700 drinking buddy or a tennis buddy or a bowling buddy or a guy at work they will have lunch with or something like

00:40:54.020 that. But by and large, men don't tend to risk true intimacy of sharing the experience that goes on within that

00:41:04.620 sack of skin that they live. And so, that isolation is pathologizing. It makes them too dependent on

00:41:13.240 sexuality for connection, for example, on food, on alcohol, and on external prizes like success and promotion

00:41:23.620 and so forth that might actually be killing them rather than supporting them.

00:41:29.100 So, I know every person's second half of life is going to look different because every person's different

00:41:33.760 and the soul, every person's soul is going to be asking something different for them. But for

00:41:36.940 men generally, when you work with men, sort of what's like the tenor, you know, sort of the mood

00:41:42.080 or sort of the broad view of what that looks like for a man as they transition? Like, what does the

00:41:47.320 second half look like or feel like for a man? Well, first of all, I think there are ideas out there.

00:41:53.540 I mean, your program is one of those contributions that were not available, frankly, 50 years ago

00:41:59.280 when I was in that transitional stage myself. I'm, you know, in a month or so going to be 80,

00:42:05.960 so I've been around a while. And by and large, for my father's era and my youth, you are defined by

00:42:12.780 your roles. You know, as I said, the man is defined by how he meets standards of productivity in whatever

00:42:18.960 field he winds up. And today, I think far more men are able to look at that and critique it

00:42:26.340 and to say, okay, but that doesn't necessarily work for me. And I think that's a certain kind

00:42:33.220 of, this is not true for everyone by any means. Some men are so, you know, conditioned by economic

00:42:39.000 hardship or lack of cultural awareness, no fault of their own, that this is not an option for them.

00:42:46.520 And I grieve for those men. But I think for many men, there's a permission for self-examination

00:42:52.800 and to perhaps, as Thoreau said, to march the tune of your own drummer, because, you know, that's why

00:42:59.540 I find more men coming into therapy and more men in the audiences when I speak around the world here.

00:43:05.860 So I think a lot has changed. The sentence I most heard as a child, basically, and many other people

00:43:13.060 have heard, was, well, what will people think? Well, you know, it's still out there. And we should not

00:43:19.540 ignore the impact of our decisions on people around us. That's not the point. But to say,

00:43:25.180 is my life defined by fitting in? Does that mean I'm supposed to become a chameleon and fit in with

00:43:32.380 my environmental demands all my life? When we're children, we're often forced to. But at some point,

00:43:38.220 you know, you become a man by sort of figuring out, well, who are you and what do you really want

00:43:44.980 with your life? And now, how do I go about doing that? Respectfully to the well-being of others,

00:43:50.700 but you also have to serve that in a way that may take you away from those collective definitions that

00:43:57.840 were so, so powerful. We realize, okay, no, I'm here to serve my soul, not popular assumptions.

00:44:06.600 And the power of those popular assumptions has so significantly waned. I think men are freer today,

00:44:12.280 by and large, but they're also adrift. Because for the average man, you know, he knows he doesn't

00:44:19.160 fit in, but he tends to internalize that as a sense of failure or shame. And that's a common

00:44:26.520 experience. Most men walk around feeling shame and then trying to hide it from everybody else.

00:44:31.680 But in fact, it's a time for tremendous opening of possibilities. And that includes the risk of

00:44:39.260 sharing that with another man. I mean, every man has to say at some level, do I have a man friend

00:44:45.480 with whom I can share what's really going on in my life, really going on, including the really

00:44:51.200 difficult and painful parts? And if not, that's part of my accountability. That's something that

00:44:58.340 I'm going to have to address. And if I'm ever going to get a richer life.

00:45:03.420 So this might be a first half of life question. So it might be the wrong question. But let's say

00:45:09.880 you're asking those questions, you started to grapple with those second half of life questions.

00:45:13.940 How do you know if you're like on the right path?

00:45:17.960 Well, what I was suggesting before is you don't know. And that's why I'm saying first half of life

00:45:23.900 is often a big mistake, but it's unavoidable. I say that with no judgment whatsoever. I'm just

00:45:28.600 saying, all right, leave home, learn how to support yourself, form friendships and relationships.

00:45:35.420 That's what you should be doing. That builds your sense of conscious self, creates ego strength. It

00:45:41.760 creates a sense of accountability and relatedness. That's good. But is that the right path for you?

00:45:47.440 Well, we're going to find that out. We don't know yet. And that's why I said I had achieved all my

00:45:53.940 goals by my 30s. And all I knew for a while as I began to feel the sort of energy slip away from

00:46:00.580 them. All I knew to do is ramp them up. And that's when the depression hit. Now, I didn't know that the

00:46:08.680 depression was my friend. That's kind of a peculiar sentence. But I didn't know that that was, again,

00:46:14.740 my encounter with my own soul. My soul was speaking. I thought, well, like anybody, how quickly do I get

00:46:20.240 rid of this? Rather than ask this very fundamental question, why has it come? What is it wanting from

00:46:27.200 me? That's a different question. So the truth is, you don't know. And even the second half of life,

00:46:33.560 you don't know often. You have to explore. You have to put yourself out there. You have to be willing to

00:46:39.360 try things. Because again, if it's right for you, your systems, as I mentioned, the feeling systems,

00:46:46.100 the energy systems, the dreams, the sense of purpose and meaning, those things will support

00:46:52.500 you. They'll rise to be there for you. Jung said once, we all have to find what supports us when

00:47:00.020 nothing supports us. So sometimes you really have to have the courage or the desperation to set off

00:47:06.400 on your own and say, this is what I'm going to risk and so forth. So when I traveled to Switzerland

00:47:13.020 for retraining at midlife, I mean, there was nothing in my environment that was supportive of

00:47:18.800 that per se. It was prohibitive in terms of income and everything else. But I felt this is something I

00:47:27.920 have to do. If I don't do this, I die, so to speak. The body would continue, but something in the soul

00:47:33.480 would die. But did I know where it was going? No. Did I plan to change my career? No. That's what

00:47:40.640 was disclosed by being on the road. And you have to be on the road, so to speak, to find out where

00:47:47.520 your directions are. Right. We live life forward. Yes. Yeah. Yeah. And as I said, forgive yourself

00:47:54.200 for mistakes. Because if you learn from it, there's no such thing as a mistake. You say,

00:47:59.840 what do I need to learn from that? Now I know that. That I'll factor into my decisions in the future.

00:48:06.600 Well, Jim, this has been a great conversation. Is there some place people can go to learn more

00:48:09.500 about your book and your work? Well, I have a website, simply jameshollis.net.

00:48:15.360 And certainly books are on Amazon and other places like that. So I hope those books... I've always

00:48:20.940 thought of books as trying to share this kind of conversation with people I haven't met out there.

00:48:27.660 And so, you know, I never wrote books to make money. You don't make a lot of money from this. But I

00:48:33.100 certainly think of it as serving that teaching vocation, which I've always experienced. And if

00:48:39.340 people read it and find something of value there, then I feel deeply grateful to be any part of

00:48:43.820 that. Well, Jim, thanks so much for your time. It's been a pleasure. You're welcome, sir. And good

00:48:47.700 luck to you. My guest name is Dr. James Hollis. He's the author of the book, Finding Meaning in the

00:48:53.060 Second Half of Life, How to Finally Really Grow Up. It's available on amazon.com and bookstores

00:48:57.300 everywhere. You can find out more information about his work at his website, jameshollis.net. Also check

00:49:02.160 our show notes at aom.is slash second half, where you find links to resources, where you delve deeper

00:49:06.660 into this topic. Well, that wraps up another edition of the AOM podcast. And I wanted to let

00:49:17.560 you know that right now, we've got an enrollment going on for the Strenuous Life, strenuouslife.co.

00:49:21.980 Talked about it. It's an online platform that we created to help you put your intentions into

00:49:25.620 actions. We've done that by creating a series of 50 different badges based around 50 different skills.

00:49:29.800 We also have accountability for fitness, doing a good deed, thinking outside of yourself,

00:49:33.960 and we provide weekly challenges that are going to push you outside of your comfort zone in different

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The Art of Manliness - April 01, 2020

#598： Journeying From the First to the Second Half of Life

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