The Second Act

Finding purpose, presence, and connection in the later chapters of life

I attended a TEDx session in Boulder this past weekend. The topics stretched wide: artificial intelligence and creativity, meditation and psychedelics, autism and disability, even bogs, sharks, and the scale of the cosmos. Some speakers explored science, others turned inward to spirituality and the human mind. The diversity of voices was striking.

One talk stood out for me. David Chernikoff, a local therapist, meditation teacher, and dharma guide, spoke on Rethinking Aging. His words had me reflecting on my father’s later years.

My father’s physical end came in 2005 after a fall and a cracked skull. But the life I knew in him had ended earlier, when my mother died of a stroke two years before. She was the center of his life. Without her he became a shell.

I remember the last time I spoke with him. My brother and I had taken his car away after we started noticing the dents and near-misses. I flew down to Texas, where he was living in an independent living center. When he saw me at the door, he tried to slam it shut before I could step inside. I jammed my foot in and forced it open.

“Dad, we have to talk,” I said.

Ten minutes later we were in the hallway and he was shouting, “Goddamn it, I used to change your diapers! Don’t you ever tell me what to do! I’m the father. You’re just some snot-nosed kid!” He turned his back to walk away, and I grabbed him, shoved him against the wall, and looked him in the eyes.

“Listen, old man. I don’t have to take that shit from you, not anymore. I’m stronger than you. I can take you down. I’m not afraid of you.”

He was eighty-one. I was forty-eight. What was I really trying to prove?

I walked out, without ever looking back.

Not long after that day, he fell and hit his head.

That memory still haunts me nearly twenty years later.

My day is coming.

I think it was Meryl Streep who said, “Aging isn’t for the faint of heart.” She was right. But it does not have to be only hardship. Chernikoff calls aging a spiritual process, an invitation to surrender. Not to give up, but to accept what is and discover what still wants to emerge. To find purpose, even when strength fades.

My father was a good man who saw his primary responsibility as providing for his family. I believe that mission mattered more to him than any of his own aspirations. They were only a means to that end.

Looking back on his retirement years, I see how small he became. Isolated. His two sons, who I know he loved, were thousands of miles away with their own lives, dreams, and families. He was proud of us, but I sense he felt his job was done. And when my mother passed, his life became an empty shell.

When I retired four years ago, I remember asking myself the same question in a hundred different ways: What now?

I have always loved the phrase “life’s second act.” It suggests that something real and meaningful can follow the first, if you are willing to step onto the stage again. More importantly, it is not the third or final act. It is simply the next phase of life, and it can be the best one if we approach it with the right attitude. Chernikoff would say it begins with surrender, not to defeat, but to possibility.

For me, finding purpose has meant simply doing purposeful things: writing and telling the truth of my own story, embracing the search for understanding through my spiritual journey, and getting outside with a pack on my back, listening to the mountains teach me about limits and resilience.

Purpose is not always grand. It is often found in the small, intentional acts we do every day. And more than anything, it is found in connection with others who are walking a similar path.

As Wallace Stegner wrote in The Spectator Bird, the second act of life is not about “just killing time until time gets around to killing me.” It is about refusing that fate, and choosing instead to keep living into what still wants to emerge.

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