Syncronicity

I think this would qualify as a case of Jungian synchronicity. I've already mentioned (I think) that I picked up a copy of The Third Chapter by Sara Lawrence-Lightfoot in one of my random bookstore browsing visits. The idea of the book--that there is a third chapter after one has completed a career and before retirment that many adults are actively pursuing--seemed to speak to my own condition. Indeed, I wish I had picked up the book a couple of years ago. This seems precisely what I am trying to do, put together a third chapter.

In any case, a woman that the author mentions is the anthropoligist and daughter of Margaret Mead, Mary Bateson. Just this weekend I listened to a program on Wisconsin Public Radio because I came across the information that it featured someone who had written a blurb for my book. And while I was downloading this podcast, I noticed another podcast in the series was titled something like "living longer, living better." So I downloaded that as well and lo and behold, the guest of this podcast i--Mary Bateson.

So here is a quote from Bateson in the book, The Third Chapter, as well as a rather lengthy but I think important introduction to the quote:

There may also be a need to rethink and rvise the ways in which people move through--and in and out of--work much earlier in their careers. Perhaps the practice of crossing the boundaries of work and rest, the habit of navigating transitions, and trying on new roles and personas, should be established earelier, allowing people to become familiar with, and adept at, reinventin themselves. Bateson suggests a kind of prophylactic attention to both continuity and discontinuity in life, a need for experiences of reflection that anticipat and help prepare for the Third Chapter:

"One way to go for both effective planning and for intellectual vitality, is to look at the years of adulthood well before standard retirement age and invent ways to build in a break, like a sabbatical leave, making it a norm rather than the exception...For some, such a break might become a transition to a differnt sphere of endeavor, public service, perhaps, or the full-time exploration of an avocation. But for many such a break may be simply a refreshment of mind and spirit, energy and creativity to be carried back to the existing career. . . Without such a break, adulthood has simply become too long except in a profession with a great deal of build in learning and diversity. Far too many adults burn out and then plod through their later years, prevented by institutions and financial structures from making new beginnings. We need to puncuate a way to end and begin chapters, to break up the run-on-sentences of the same-old-same-old."

All I can say is that these words truly speak to me. One might argue that academia is a profession taht does allow for "built in learning and diversity," and for many that might be the case. All I know is that I had run my course in that career. Indeed, I still think that except for someone who has had a life before coming to academia five year break at some point would be exactly the thing that is called for. But that's neither here nor there. It is time to me to look toward the other alternatives of either full time pursuit of avocation (writing) or another career (?).