The Second Half of Life

Two years ago when I first started writing my blog, "Flower Bear's Garden: Planting the Seeds for the Second Half of Life," people asked me just what I meant by the second half of life was. When did it start? Was there a specific birthday that marked the halfway point? And what kind of seeds were we supposed to be planting anyway?

Even though life seems to be measured in chronological years, in reality, life is measured in experience. The first half of our life is our educational experience. Through both formal education and life experiences, we absorb the world around us and build on those experiences. We grow up, go to school, get jobs, get married, have the kids ... in essence, as Dr. Wayne Dyer tells us we, "fill out all the forms." Then the day comes when the kids have moved out into the world, the job is past tense, and we look at what we have learned and experienced and ask ourselves which beliefs have been true for us and which ones were someone else's ideas or experiences that we adopted as our own. Which ones no longer serve us, which ones need to be changed, and what is there left to learn that we might not already know? More importantly, what is there yet to be experienced that calls to us?'

The second half of life, then, is where we pull out the weeds that are no longer true for us, or were never true to begin with, and plant something better in its place. We plant the seeds of gratitude, love, beauty, peace and our own personal truths. We  plant the seeds of passion and excitement, of adventures yet to be taken and experiences yet to explore. This garden  that we plant ourselves and not by others, grows into an intentional life that we water and nurture on our own terms.

I would be curious to know what you are planting in your own intentional gardens, and which weeds you have pulled out. I would not be surprised if many of us are planting the same things.  Perhaps we can share our seeds with each other.

And so it is.