The Second Half Of Life - Adventures In My Yoga Pants

I have just ordered my third pair. Sweaty Betty Garudsana yoga pants, cropped, in black, Gary for short. They come in navy too but then just last week, I offended a large number of people making appearances on LinkedIn during the longest International Women’s Day ever by describing navy as the colour of corporate bland, a fitting in, a giving up, a safe version of its more sophisticated cousin, black.

I’ve never practiced yoga in my life but I have a mat in the boot of my car just in case. Occasionally it gets lifted out when I need to fill the boot with other things like children. But I’ve decided my Garys are everything to me right now. They satisfy my every need – they are super soft, the lightweight fabric is perfect for sitting or squatting, they have pockets, fitted cuffs to hold my short legs in place. They are relaxed fit with a high waist. They don’t cling. They aren’t complicated. They ask nothing from me – no zips, buttons or clasps that won’t close. I can wear them anywhere – to the shops, to the cinema, to the beauty salon, to bed, to all the places I go in the dark. I can just get up in the morning and tackle the day straightaway. I’m planning to wear them on a flight tomorrow. I’ll dress them up with a pashmina and a large pair of tortoiseshell sunnies. They are my solitary wardrobe staple. I alternate them with sportswear. I am the Queen of athleisure since I sold all my workwear. My Garys live in a drawer because they don’t scream to be seen. They know exactly who they are and they’re content with it. They aren’t having an identity crisis. They laugh at the rail of vibrant, low-back evening gowns I keep for glamorous occasions that never come. It is March 2023. I am somewhere between extreme comfort and ultimate adventure. There’s no middle ground.

When a pandemic coincided with a career break, with midlife, with hormonal disruption and biological changes and psychological overload, I had to cast off – the jeans that strangled me round the middle, the scarves that strangled me round the neck. If I was going to do this, if I was going to extricate myself from all the clichés, the dullness, the conforming, the rules and restrictions that had bound me, I needed something looser round the waist too.

I’ve been reading Richard Rohr. I consider him my spiritual grandfather, my lightbulb moment. I can tell not everyone likes him. I googled him. To some, he’s a heretic. He has questionable ideas. But, isn’t that always the way? We analyse, dissect, critique those who have something useful to say until they either fit our own narrow-minded perspectives or can be discarded so we can stay in the closed mindsets we’ve always had. I like him. He is making sense of what’s been happening to me. I try to cope with the fact that it is a man who is unravelling the mysteries of the menopause for me. He talks mainly about that transition from the first half of life into the second half. “We are a ‘first-half-of-life culture’ largely concerned about surviving successfully,” he says. “We all try to do what seems like the task that life first hands us: establishing an identity, a home, relationships, friends, community, security…. ”^¹. Looking good to ourselves and others is all that matters.

Not everyone makes it into the second half of life. It’s not chronological, linear, time-bound, age is irrelevant. It’s not a universal gift, it’s more metaphysical than experiential. Some who are younger, those who have suffered early in life and learned from it, will make it there. Some who are older will never achieve the required maturity. It is not a journey we will all take because there’s simply too much that keeps us in the first half of life, too much to lose. “The familiar and the habitual are so falsely reassuring and most of us make our homes there permanently,” Rohr says.  

It is only when we begin to pay attention, become curious about the task that actually lies within the task of life that we begin to move from the first to the second half of our lives. If the task of the first stage of life is to create our container, then the task of the second stage is to find the actual contents that this container should hold. Usually, we don’t transition through effort or choice. We are often led against our will, by some mysterious force, by a voice in our head that asks us is this all there is. Something we once believed in falls apart. It drives us to our knees. It might simply be our soul asking us what is it we plan to do with our one wild and precious life²?

Sometimes I want to kiss him, this bearded Franciscan priest. I know now why I had to leave so much - the institutions that were holding me back, my job, my church, my commitments, the Women’s Network I had nurtured and loved because I told women it would help them fulfil their potential but then I realised only they can do that for themselves. Any constructs I am left with have to work for me now - motherhood, marriage, my roles as daughter, friend, member, citizen. My companions for the road need to be those who are in their second half too. I understand now why there are some people that I can no longer spend large amounts of time with because they are still stuck. I have nothing against them. I try not to judge. It isn’t always their fault. Society is almost entirely configured to reward and validate the first half of life. Rohr warns not to despise those who haven’t got there yet, who haven’t discovered that there is a dangerous crossing they need to make. They may have the feelings, the angsts, the nudges but they will never act on them. “The soul has many secrets. They are only revealed to those who want them, and are never completely forced upon us”. To go there means risk, death to the false self. There’s the ego to deal with too. “The ego is that part of you that loves the status quo, even when it is not working. It attaches to past and present, and fears the future”. And you will never get there if you are still focused on achieving the myth of career success.

“I don’t know where I am,” said my husband. I was sharing my vast wisdom about the first and second halves of life as I clipped the tag off a Gary. Coldplay were on the radio. “One minute, I held the key. Next, the walls were closed on me. And I discovered that my castles stand. Upon pillars of salt and pillars of sand”³. I looked at him, I envied his remarkably free from inner turmoil existence. I wondered had he miraculously escaped, or maybe he’d always been there in the second half, waiting for me to join him. I knew I couldn’t have got there without him.

For a long time, I thought it was only a job I had to break up with. I even wrote a trilogy about it⁴. But now I know it was so much more than that. I had a whole first part of my life to break up with. Maybe that’s why it’s been so hard.

There’s a been a lot to learn, even more to unlearn. “You cannot walk the second journey with first journey tools. You need a whole new tool kit”. And you need to travel light, preferably in a pair of Gary yoga pants.

1. Richard Rohr Falling Upward. This and all quotes that follow.

2. Mary Oliver The Summer Day

3. Coldplay Viva La Vida

4. Breaking Up Is Hard To Do