Prologue
A Territory with No Maps

The second half of life has become a territory with no maps.

For men and women now moving through midlife and beyond, the path forward is uncharted. It is a journey that has never, in the course of human history, been taken on this scale and with such abandon.

Until the late twentieth century, there was no concept of midlife and beyond because most people died at a relatively young age. In 1900, average life expectancy was around 47 years, about the same as it had been since the dawn of time. Today, the average lifespan in industrialized nations hovers at 80 and above. So, for nearly all of human history, most people died around what we now consider midlife. Adults today are the first full generation of human beings to venture into such a long and vital second half of life.

We are setting forth into terra incognita and as a result, many of us feel quite lost.

For the majority of people, the path through the first half of life is somewhat predictable—it’s about building a life structure; the second half, though, appears more random. Fewer choices are made for us, but the freedom this gives us is not necessarily liberating.

Some people, to be sure, simply keep doing what they’ve always done without much reflection. But for many of us, the first-half structure needs to be reinvented. We find ourselves feeling uneasy about what’s next. We recognize that the time before us, though perhaps—if we’re lucky—rather extended, is indeed limited and this inspires in us a deep need to find our way forward.

Inevitably, the second half of life involves loss—loss of friends and/or family, physical changes and ailments, a growing sense that life may be passing us by—but if we can find the courage to confront and move through those losses, we are apt to discover a new sense of vitality and direction. Exploring the questions that spring up before us can lead to the revelation that we have powerful choices in abundance.

The awareness that we can find a new guidance system for the second half of life is exhilarating. Buried inside the quantitative change in the number of years we live is the possibility of a qualitative one: the evolution of a different perspective on life than the one that brought us to midlife in the first place. For people moving into this new territory, an externally directed guidance system loses its aura in favor of an internally directed one. This new inner-directed capacity to be grounded in one’s own sense of self is also linked to a compassion for others.

And so, paradoxically, it is within our relationships with others that we discover our own selves in this previously uncharted territory of life’s second half. Through these connections, we make the connections with ourselves required to navigate forward in midlife and beyond.

And that, in short, is what we, as authors, hope to offer to you, as reader, in this book. We hope, simply, to share our experience—and the experience of those whose stories we relate—of finding guidance and direction in the second half of life as a way to assist you in doing the same. We have taken this journey together as friends and coauthors, and the outcome of that journey is this book. Now we invite you to embark upon the journey with us. It is a journey back to the eternal questions: Where did I come from? Where am I going? What is my purpose for living?

Back to the essential conversation that reveals the answers in dialogue with ourselves, each other, and wisdom through the ages. Back to the place where the quest was begun—individually, and as a species— where human beings first emerged and embarked on the epic journey that leads to each of us being here, now, pondering these same eternals.

Back then, to Africa, to the ancient rhythm of life, on a journey for those long-sought answers—only this time, at last, together.

In 1994, we published our first work together, Repacking Your Bags: Lighten Your Load for the Rest of Your Life. It began with a story Richard told about trekking along the Serengeti plains with a Maasai tribesman named Koyie. Koyie’s question about the pack full of high-tech gear that Richard was carrying, “Does all this make you happy?” became a theme for many of the inquiries about lightening one’s load that were central to the book’s message.

A few years later, we wrote Whistle While You Work: Heeding Your Life’s Calling, which explored the nature of meaningful work within the context of a life well-lived. Another story from Africa launched the text. This time, Richard told a tale of coming across lions in the Salai plains and having no choice but to press on through the danger. The message that emerged was that “if you can’t get out of it, get into it,” and this, too, was a recurring theme throughout the book.

In 2001, our third book, Claiming Your Place at the Fire: Living the Second Half of Your Life on Purpose, was published. Once more, it began with a story from Africa. This time, Richard related his experience of sitting around the campfire in Tanzania with elders from the Hadzabe tribe of hunter-gatherers. The message of the tale was that becoming an elder is a matter of claiming one’s place in the social system through the sharing of wisdom and narrative. And again, lessons learned in Africa were central to the text; we drew deeply upon Richard’s experiences with African elders to help illuminate our own perspective on vital aging and the second half of life.

So, with all this talk about and focus upon Africa, and given that we have had a deep personal and professional relationship stretching back more than two decades now, you might think that the two of us have probably spent a good deal of time together in that large and mysterious continent.

The truth is, however, until this past year, we had never been in Africa together. Dave’s connection to the African lands and people had been totally vicarious, through Richard. While this hadn’t prevented us from writing the stories and using them to help us convey our messages, there’s no doubt that it did affect our ability to relate the experiences together.

But at last, that has changed. We have finally gotten back to the rhythm together.

In the Spring of 2006, we had the opportunity, along with a dozen other men, aged around 50 and above, from the USA, Canada, and Europe, to travel together in northern Tanzania and to experience together the authentic source experience that Africa offers. And from this, in no small part, has emerged this book, Something to Live For: Finding Your Way in the Second Half of Life.

Admittedly, this is an experience we were privileged as Westerners to have had and one we are deeply grateful for having been able to share. And certainly it is one informed by the fact that we are both men and that our safari, though not by design a “men’s journey,” was one undertaken by and with a group of men. And while we must admit that our narrative springs from a certain perspective we have as men together with men, we do sincerely believe that questions we had and the answers we found have application across cultures and gender.

In the pages that follow, we explore a number of themes and lessons that have come out of our time spent with several African tribes. We hope they shed light on our ongoing learning about why it is essential to have something to live for.

We also hope that from our long-awaited shared experience will emerge two additional themes that, for us, marked what it meant to be in Africa together. We call these authenticity and wholeheartedness and see them, in many ways, as defining not only what being together in Africa was like, but also as linking together much of what lies at the foundation of our message in this book.

For Dave, finally getting to Africa meant that he no longer had to just imagine what it was like. He no longer had to apologize and explain to people why it was he’d never been and how it was he thought he could still write about it honestly. Being in Africa enabled him to fully inhabit a story that had always been merely told to him; it removed sensory blinders and brought forth the full bouquet of sights, sounds, smells, and tastes he had enjoyed only virtually. Above all, this made for a truly authentic experience and allowed Dave to become more authentic himself in thinking and writing about it.

For Richard, the theme of wholeheartedness marked our shared experience in Africa. Being there together gave him the freedom to fully reveal his deep and abiding love for the land and people we encountered. Instead of merely relating stories to Dave, he was able to include his writing partner in them. Instead of having to occasionally temper his enthusiasm, he was able to really open his heart and let the joy he so often experiences in Africa pour forth, sharing his feelings without having to explain them or put them in context. In this way, he was able to put his whole self into the experience, embracing it wholeheartedly.

Being in Africa together also represented a step forward in our personal and professional relationship. It meant that we had the time to get to know each other better and to talk about our lives and our passions in deeper, more authentic and wholehearted ways. It also meant we had more opportunities than ever before to discuss the core of our work together. From those opportunities has emerged this book, Something to Live For: Finding Your Way in the Second Half of Life.

And for you, the reader, we hope this means we are able to offer you a work that engages you even more fully than any of our previous books. To the extent that Something to Live For flows out of our own life quests, we hope that it may connect with you in deeper, more profound ways. To the extent that we are discovering new ways to be more authentic and wholehearted, we offer to you a work we have tried to make more authentic and wholehearted, as well.

And so, we welcome you on a journey back to the rhythm, to a place where self-discovery is made possible through experience and reflection. The intent of this expedition is to help provide insight into eternal questions we all face at times in our lives, but never more provocatively than in the second half.

We explore these questions in three main parts. In Part 1: Savoring the World, you are invited to return to a time and place where our connections to the natural world and its patterns of time and space are revealed more clearly to us and where we are better able to clarify for ourselves what really matters in our lives.

In Part 2: Saving the World, we take on our generosity to fellow travelers and what it means to shape a life that makes a positive difference to the lives of others. Drawing upon the ways and practices of both traditional and contemporary societies, we seek to bring forth the time-honored lessons of tribes and elders who have sustained themselves for centuries.

In Part 3: Finding Your Way, we examine what it really means and takes to be truly fulfilled in the second half of our lives. We offer up practices that can help us live a life of purpose and meaning—saving the world—while simultaneously infusing our experiences with vitality and joy—savoring it. There are many pathways to finding our way in life, especially during the second half, and in this part of the book, we explore such routes to vital aging.

Ultimately, the path we share in this book may seem both familiar and unfamiliar—as it has to us along the way. It is our hope that in traveling together, we arrive at a destination we have been long seeking, one that enables us, wholeheartedly and authentically, to discover something to live for.