This book was one of my three inspirations to start That Which Matters in Jan 2023.
For a while, I had been reading Arthur C. Brooks’ happiness column in The Atlantic and then I chanced upon his book:
He talks about the inevitable decline in our professional lives by middle age, and suggests that the only way forward is if:
You can accept that what got you to this point won’t get you into the future – that you need to build some new strengths and skills.
Arthur C. Brooks, From Strength to Strength
Before diving in, let’s take a quick look at the major phrases in the title and how I have experienced them so far:
- Strength: has waxed and waned with the seasons
- Success: haven’t had much of that in conventional terms
- Happiness: elusive bugger but I have a sense of it now
- Deep purpose: this is one thing that I actually have a handle on
- Second half of life: at times it has felt like the Endgame, but let’s assume there is some time ahead and hence it is worthwhile trying to find success, happiness, and deep purpose
[A few weeks later…]
It has been almost three months since I first started writing this post and then got stuck. It happens. Especially if I have just written a post about great flow in the month of March and how I have written more than half a million words in the last three years. Life has a way of making you pause when you perhaps overstretch. Lol.
Life then also has a way of sending something your way to get started once more. In this instance, I had two nudges.
The first was a visit from a cousin earlier in the week, someone I have always been fond of but just haven’t stayed in touch with over the years. He was visiting Mumbai for work and dropped a message to ask if I was free to meet him. I said yes and I went to the hotel he was staying at. As I walked in and looked to the left towards the coffee shop, I remembered with a jolt that this was the exact same hotel and coffee shop where I had last met my brother before he went back to the US to take his life.
On that visit in May 2023, near that very entrance (or was it the exit?), Rajesh had paused to give me a longer-than-usual hug and he stretched out his goodbye, hanging around chatting and not heading off to his room in his usual brisk manner. It was something that I noticed but did not give much cognizance to at that moment. Makes me wonder: what use was my freaking prescience and intuition if I could not act on it?
When I shared this memory with my cousin, sitting two tables away from where Rajesh had sat with me two years ago, he said we often piece together things in hindsight – finding little clues to fill in the picture, to help us make sense to a question that can never be answered, and whose silence we will have to live with forever. His observation reminded me of something similar that Rajesh had told me during one of our breakfast chats in another context: sometimes we don’t get closure but we have to make peace with the uncertainty in order to live. It makes me wonder: how did this man who had such wisdom for the world fail to apply it to himself? Is this a blind spot for all of us?
That brief interlude by the entrance of the hotel in May 2023 would be one of Rajesh’s last goodbyes before he put in place the final pieces of his plan to “shed his mortal coils”, as he wrote in his final email to me, which found its way to me much later.
Well, the conversation with my cousin was … how do I describe it? It was a discovery of a new connection, talking about Rajesh – how he was loved and admired in the family and yet he just did not feel loved – and then about my life here in Mumbai, his worry for my mental health (he had read my blogs and wondered if all was well with me). He seemed relieved I was not depressed or suicidal myself and was doing well. More than anything, we just laughed a lot as I told him some of my crazy dating stories.
This was exactly what Rajesh had done with me during his trips to India – we would meet at the hotel he was staying at and we would talk about our divorces and dates and what the future held for each of us … until he grew tired of that conversation I guess, and left me at a loose end wondering what might have been in this second half of my life if he had not done what he did.
Chatting with my cousin, I found myself opening up about my life in a way I had not for a long while with anyone, and at the end of the two hours, I told him it felt like I had got a brother back that day.
I am tempted to share a photo of the two of us here but I don’t think he would want that – even this much must be making him a bit self-conscious. Well bro, sorry about that, but hey the Tiramisu was great, wasn’t it?
The second nudge came last evening from a very dear friend who wrote out of the blue to say how she was thinking about me and found herself reading my blog and resonating with what I had written – that it made her smile at times. In her inimitable style, she recognized what makes me tick and reflected that back to me in a beautiful way that left me felt seen. She encouraged me to continue writing, and so here I am, after a break of about three months, to complete this post.
Now, coming back to the book that inspired this post, what on earth does all of the above have to do with Brooks’ book about finding success, happiness, and deep purpose in the second half of life?
Well, my brother died a few months before my fiftieth birthday, almost as a marker for the start of the second half (a bit optimistic to think of it as a half, more like a third or a quarter left at best, if that, lol). So the question of what must one do in the second half of life is a significant conundrum, and links back to the title of this book.
However, I have to say that I somehow did not find much inspiration in that book when I read it recently because it was first and foremost about success once again – in a repackaged form perhaps – and then it was about research and data that pointed to how having connection is important for your happiness! Oh man! How much research do we need to back up common experience? Isn’t 50 years enough? Does reading a book backed by research enable us to go out there tomorrow to forge new connections? Hardly! I found myself nodding along – yes, this is true, yes that is true – or nodding off – more graphs to show how quickly I can go from the end of one career to the next without missing a beat! It left me wondering: what is wrong with missing a beat, or even a few years, to reconcile with loss and grief? What’s this obsession with having it all together all the time? To move from strength to strength?
Must I just get out there when things are falling apart – to write books, teach, be a mentor, forge connections, build community, find faith, and so on? Could I not just cry a lifetime of tears and rant at the unfairness of life in the privacy of my room for however long it takes, sitting with its utter meaninglessness, instead of trying to forge some new constructs, stories, and identities?
As I type this, I think of the airplane that crashed in Ahmedabad a few days ago, resulting in the tragic death of all but one passenger. So many families left grieving, wondering: what if? How will they piece together their lives? What success, purpose, or happiness will they forge? Are these even relevant questions? My heart goes out to each of them as they try to make sense of this senselessness.
Could my second half then be not about success, happiness, or purpose but just authenticity? I guess for me it takes the shape of this blog TWM. The beauty of writing one’s blog is that one can say the same thing over and over again in different ways without a care for the world.
I don’t have an issue with Brooks’ book – I am sure it has been well-received and there are those who like such positive messages of growth from a renowned author and professor, all of it backed by scientific research and data. Three years ago, I did find value in it as well. But I struggled to connect with the message on the second read, unlike the way direct experiential learning did, from say my meditations on the Direct Path.
So, I am thinking: how was this book one of my three inspirations to start this blog but isn’t as much now? Hmm. I guess three years ago, given my state of mind then and life circumstances, when there was hope and energy to reimagine my life, something in it spoke to me in ways that I am struggling to connect with now.
It could be that I experienced a lot of loss in the year after I read the book the first time, and on reading it a second time recently, I found I have so little interest in superficial things such as success and transient happiness, when there has been so much loss and grief to reckon with.
Perhaps he needs to write a second book on living with grief, loss and uncertainty in the second half of life because that is a time we all typically see a lot of it. See, there is an idea for your next book, Prof. Brooks. Do mention me in your acknowledgments, and please leave out the graphs. Who would think I am a math teacher? Lol.
But hey, I am grateful that it was a catalyst for starting this blog and I guess this blog is precisely an exploration of the title of this book. So yeah it did its work, and I should acknowledge it. Thank you for that, Prof. Brooks.
I am going to cheat a bit and end this post here without writing much more about the book. Sorry folks! Do read it though and I hope it catalyzes something for you as well.
However, what is coming up next, which I am excited to write about, is The Life of Chuck.
Featured Image: Photo by Dorota Trzaska on Unsplash
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