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Feature Article: Halftime "For the first time – and I mean that literally – substantial and rapidly growing numbers of people have choices. For the first time, they will have to manage themselves." - Peter Drucker There is a ground-breaking book with the above title written by Bob Buford, whose mentor is the famous management guru, Peter Drucker (Peter Drucker died at age 95 in 2005). Bob Buford wrote a follow up book entitled Finishing Well, in which he shares about Peter Drucker's views on society when he, Peter Drucker, was in his nineties:
Why is this so? During the Roman Empire, Romans had an approximate life expectancy of 22 to 25 years. In 1900, the world life expectancy was approximately 30 years and in 1985 it was about 62 years. Today it is 67.2 years. Life expectancy has increased dramatically in the last 100 years! The table below shows more data sourced from Wikipedia and Encyclopedia Britannica:
This new development in the history of mankind has resulted in people retiring while they are still in relative good health and sometimes still in the prime of life, with many more years ahead – if they know what to do with their time. This is why Buford calls his first book Halftime – his thesis is that nowadays, we live long enough (provided there are no unexpected events, of course) to have two lives, which he calls Life I and Life II. Life I is about proving oneself and achieving success, whereas Life II is about finding meaning and purpose, about living significantly (there is usually some overlap between the two). In between the two is Halftime, a transitional and sometimes distressing state of seeking directions for Life II, when we have to manage ourselves as Peter Drucker puts it. To be inadequately prepared, or worse still, ignorant of Life II is to find ourselves lost once we reach some midpoint of our lives, or upon "retiring." It is interesting to note that Abraham Maslow, of the famed Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs, showed a progression in his thoughts on this hierarchy as he grew older and presumably wiser. Below is what it looked like in 1943[1]:
The upper levels of the hierarchy have been further developed, with an interesting addition at its peak: Self-Transcendence. Maslow noticed that there were a few people who were able to truly go beyond themselves, and achieve something else entirely, for the sake of others. This he termed a "plateau experience," which may be something akin to Buford's Life II. There are other authors who describe the difference using the terms "being driven" versus "being called." To be driven is to be propelled by some inner need or hunger, for example, by the need to prove oneself. A calling, in comparison, is the time-honored (but sadly, dying) concept of a vocation, a profession of service towards some greater good. It is worth noting that those rare breed who are called by a vocation sometimes do not have their financial future secured at all.
We can draw some direct parallels here between all these concepts:
[1] A. H. Maslow, "A Theory of Human Motivation," Psychological Review, 1943, Vol. 50 #4, pp. 370-396. [2] A. H. Maslow, The Farther Reaches of Human Nature, 1971 (posthumously).
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