Second Grade and the Second Half

The training wheels are great... for a while

I'm a few weeks into 2nd grade. I'm quiet, introverted. But I decide I need to make an ask of my teacher. It's important enough for me to push through my shyness.

I walk up to Mrs. Dane's desk. She has long brown hair that's almost always up in a bun - unless it's a parent-teacher conference day.

"Mrs. Dane," I say nervously. "Could I have… more homework?"

I don't remember her reaction. I can only imagine I must have had to explain myself. Was I the first student she had who asked for more homework? I bet so.

My parents didn't know I was asking for more homework. They may have tried to talk me out of it. Later that year (and the years to come) they would worry about how much homework I had, wishing I could just go outside and be a kid, play baseball in the backyard.

But I liked the feeling of learning, of understanding how things are, why things are. And I wanted more. I felt like more homework might help me understand the world better, faster.

I liked homework. Kind of. Really, I liked the feeling of understanding things. Every completed worksheet was like a little sigh of relief - a feeling of being safe in this big world. Sure, I wanted to know division and how to spell "metamorphosis." But underneath that, I was learning how to protect myself from the uncertainty of life. And the way I did it was through gaining knowledge.

I was well on my way into the first half of my life.

---

Many psychology and spirituality teachers talk about the two halves of life.

“The first half of life is devoted to forming a healthy ego; the second half is going inward and letting go of it.” - Carl Jung

The first half is about building our sense of self - our ego, our identify, our container. It's helpful to get some beliefs and achievements and roles in the world to get us going on our journey. We have to learn how to survive and belong and contribute. This is how we build an strong sense of self we can stand on.

This is good. It's necessary to start here. Without a container, there's nothing to hold the contents of our lives.

The danger, though, is we can spend our whole lives reinforcing the container and never realize we were meant to fill it. Many religious systems stop here - teaching us how to believe the right things, follow the right ways - without ever inviting us into the second half of the journey.

The second half of life is when the goal shifts. We integrate and transcend the ego. We stop living to protect the self, and we begin to trust Life, trust Reality. Our separate self is no longer the point - the point is presence with the moment.

The point of the first half is to build something strong enough to let go of in the second half.

I’ve built my identity around understanding and competence. For me, safety means knowing the right answers and doing things well. Other people build a self around other things - being wanted, or achieving and being successful, or being right and good, or creating peace and harmony, or being strong and on and on… We all have our own first-half-of-life strategies for surviving and belonging.

Of course, I didn’t know that as a kid. All I knew was that more homework made me feel safe and cozy. But as the years went by, I kept reinforcing that container, that ego structure. Always trying to feel safe and okay.
Until it nearly broke.

---

In 2nd grade, when I wasn’t doing extra homework, I was usually playing sports. Baseball was my game back then, and for an eight-year-old, I was pretty good. I had the “Golden Glove” award, played first base or short stop, and had mad stats (for coach pitch).

But my above-average playing didn’t come from raw talent or pure love of the game. It came from being the kind of kid who needed to do things well. To figure out the game and understand it. While other kids were picking dandelions in the outfield, I was studying my stance, practicing my throw, trying to understand the mechanics.

Before games, I’d sit on my backyard swing set. Not swinging. Just replaying scenarios in my head. This wasn’t about joy. It was about mastery, competence, and understanding - because that’s what felt good for me. Or at least made me feel safe. Even in a game where everyone got orange slices afterward, I only felt secure if I knew I was good at it.

That same drive carried into school. Honor roll in middle school. Finished high school in three years by taking evening classes. I upgraded from "more homework, please" to "more classes and college credit, please."

In my early twenties, two of my best friends gave me a book for my birthday: Systematic Theology. A massive, brick-sized volume that, for most people, would be the worst gift to receive. It barely fits on a normal sized shelf. For me, it was perfect. An encyclopedia of answers, ideas, and frameworks for constructing Reality and God in a way that felt certain, solid, safe. Happy birthday to me.

Eventually, I became a pastor - the one with the answers, the one who could make sense of things for other people. I thought that was the point. I taught others that was the point.

Then, in my late twenties, my faith fell apart. All my answers stopped working. The certainty that had always kept me feeling safe no longer matched what I was experiencing in life, in people, in myself. It felt shattering - partly because no one had told me this is what is supposed to happen. Your first half of life needs to come to an end. But I didn’t know that.

My old belief structures collapsed… but my ego structure didn’t. My operating system was the same: protect myself with knowledge.

I went into crisis mode and did what I’d always done: more homework. I read. A lot. Looking back at my Amazon history from those early weeks is almost embarrassing - I was reading nearly a book a day. The uncertainty of Life was painful and information was my salve. If I could just understand, then I’d be okay.

I started building new belief systems, new frameworks. And then I did what I always did - I defended them, debated them, treated them like treasures I had to protect. Until those, too, began to fray at the edges and open up bigger questions… which, of course, led to more reading.

Slowly, over years - through relentless life, deep suffering, and more questions than I could answer - I began to soften. I still wanted frameworks and language, but now I was drawn to ideas that pointed beyond themselves: to Mystery, to Presence, to Union. I found the contemplative tradition, which didn’t treat salvation as ideas about Reality, but as trusting Reality itself. Being present to it. Right here, right now.

I might say that this is when the second half of my life began.

I had spent the first half of life building a strong and healthy ego - and that was good, necessary journey. Now the work is to take off the training wheels I used to need, and enjoy the ride.

Someone recently told me, “You’re so well-read!” They meant it as a compliment, but I knew better. It’s not pure intellectual curiosity - it’s a respected coping mechanism. Reading soothes my separate self. It makes me feel safe, like I can relax a little. And I’m learning (slowly) to put the book down sooner.

---

The second half isn’t about throwing away the first half. It’s about transcending and including it. It’s about taking the gifts of what we’ve built - the understanding, the skills, the maturity - and releasing our need to guard them.

Richard Rohr has said, “In the second half of the spiritual life, you are not making choices as much as you are being guided, taught, and led.”

Healthy religion should help us here. It should give us enough structure to get started, then teach us to let go when it’s time. To help us move from protection into presence.

The problem is that many spiritual leaders have not been told about the second half of life. They are still in the first half - using religion as another tool for fortifying their own identity and protection. Since we can only lead others as far as we have gone, they unfortunately teach others that the point is to believe the right things, trust the right scriptures, follow the right person. They are preaching about the training wheels, when the whole point is to eventually take them off.

The training wheels are not salvation, they are the starting point.

The second half of life can feel wrong if taught that the training wheels - the beliefs, symbols, scriptures - are the point. It can feel like losing your faith, when in fact you're not losing anything - you're integrating. Not throwing away the container but filling it with lived reality.

When read through this lens, the Bible becomes an account of individuals and collectives wrestling through this transformation - from beliefs about an external God to the experience of the divine in all of Reality. It's the pattern of salvation.

It's good to study, to learn, to know. The invitation of faith is not to deny that, but to let it become the doorway into lived trust. We thank our traditions that gave us language and practices and stories to give Reality enough shape that we could approach it. Until we became ready to set down the concepts and meet Reality directly.

I needed belief structures in order to one day move beyond belief structures - into the direct, embodied experience of here and now.
I needed an external, personified God so that I could grow into the awareness of the divine as an intimate presence in everything.
I needed to start with certainty about the world so that I could eventually learn to embrace its mystery.
I needed to begin with dualistic thinking - dividing reality into good and evil - so that I could one day hold the paradox and wholeness of all things.
I needed to first see divinity in Jesus so that I could later see divinity in everyone - even in myself.

Whatever your tradition, scriptures, or names for God, we can only meet the divine and each other through presence. And we thank whatever first half of life helped us to get here.

---

It's a Sunday afternoon. The kind of day with nowhere to be. My kids are in the backyard playing in the afternoon sun. I can see them in my periphery through the glass door.
While I read.

My son comes and hits the sliding glass door and yells, "Come play baseball, dad!" I smile and silently motion the gesture for Yeah, maybe, in a little while.

I’ve been feeling stressed. Always stressed. About the future, finances, will everything be okay? So I’m using my favorite coping strategy: more homework. Reading, learning. Sometimes it's a business book, sometimes a psychology book, parenting book. Today, it's a book on contemplation. The author is talking about presence. The irony of the moment is thick.

Even with a concept like presence, I can so easily turn it into another thing to learn, understand, master. Then I'll be okay. Then I'll feel safe.

My son bangs on the door again. "Dad! Do you want to play baseball?"

I nod, kept reading.

A third time. He yells again for me to be with him. That's all he wants. To play a game with his dad.

That’s really all I want, too. Just to relax and play. To trust that I'm safe enough to be present to this moment.

I finally close my book. I walk outside to an excited 3 year old boy. He gives me the ball and tells me I'm the pitcher.

I pitch him the ball. Over and over. He loves the repetition. He loves trying to master his swing. He may have a similar first half of life as his dad.

Now I try to be the best pitcher and cheerleader he can have this afternoon. To relax into this moment. To enjoy my son and pitching him a baseball.
To begin living into the second half of my life.