How to Make Your Life "Something to Die For"

If you are a bit of a hedonist, this book isn't for you. If you yearn for a life of meaning and want to create a "life to die for," read on.

Something to Live For: Finding Your Way in the Second Half of Life, 2008, by coach Richard J. Leider and educator/ philosopher David Shapiro, offers us another guide for living. Leider has taken groups of men to East Africa for the past 25 years. There, they reflect upon their adventures and "inventures" (self-reflections) as they sit around the fire in the evening with the wise elders of the traditional hunter-gatherer tribe, called the Hadza, that Richard has forged a relationship with. They apply the cultural, ecological, and spiritual learning from their journey to the questions: Why do some people create something to live for in their later years and others do not? Why are so few people happy at any age? They wonder: How can we make the 2nd half of life as energizing and exciting as the 1st half?

The men ask themselves existential questions: Where do I come from? Where am I going? What is my life purpose? Through stories of their African experience, they suggest that "something to live for" comes from linking savoring with saving the world. How do we do that?

Savoring in the 2nd half of life, they write, involves a new way of thinking, where we value the now as much as we value the destination. Spiritual thinkers over the ages... popularized currently by Eckhart Tolle, Thich Nhat Hanh, and many others... recognize the power of being in the present moment. The pilgrimages to Africa for these Western men epitomizes a return to basics, to be able to view life from the lens of the present moment.

Saving the world suggests a generativity, an openness to being generous with our community, however large or small we define that. It's a life of meaningful connections to and caring for the future generations.

The book includes exercises of writing "Letters to Live For," letters to your younger self from the vantage point of what you know now, letters to your child, to a deceased love one, to someone you've had difficulty with. In these writings, the authors counsel us to "put your whole self in" and see what you learn about yourself.

The mantra of their trip became "better than good." How can we find our voices that are "wholehearted, authentic, and purposeful?" When we do, then our 2nd half of life becomes "better than good."