From Strength to Strength: Finding Success, Happiness, and Deep Purpose in the Second Half of Life

by Arthur C. Brooks

“striver’s curse”: people who strive to be excellent at what they do often wind up finding their inevitable decline terrifying, their successes increasingly unsatisfying, and their relationships lacking.

Here is the reality: in practically every high-skill profession, decline sets in sometime between one’s late thirties and early fifties.

You can accept that what got you to this point won’t work to get you into the future—that you need to build some new strengths and skills.

crystallized intelligence. This is defined as the ability to use a stock of knowledge learned in the past.

Crystallized intelligence, relying as it does on a stock of knowledge, tends to increase with age through one’s forties, fifties, and sixties—and does not diminish until quite late in life, if at all.

Cattell himself described the two intelligences in this way: “[Fluid intelligence] is conceptualized as the decontextualized ability to solve abstract problems, while crystallized intelligence represents a person’s knowledge gained during life by acculturation and learning.”[6] Translation: When you are young, you have raw smarts; when you are old, you have wisdom. When you are young, you can generate lots of facts; when you are old, you know what they mean and how to use them.

Cicero believed three things about older age. First, that it should be dedicated to service, not goofing off. Second, our greatest gift later in life is wisdom, in which learning and thought create a worldview that can enrich others. Third, our natural ability at this point is counsel: mentoring, advising, and teaching others, in a way that does not amass worldly rewards of money, power, or prestige.

“There is nothing proper about what you are doing, soldier,” Cicero schooled the centurion. “But do try to kill me properly.”[11]

Devote the back half of your life to serving others with your wisdom. Get old sharing the things you believe are most important. Excellence is always its own reward, and this is how you can be most excellent as you age.

You must state your desire to lighten your load with pride’s opposing virtue: humility.

Satisfaction comes not from chasing bigger and bigger things, but paying attention to smaller and smaller things. Buddhist

Marcus Aurelius said that “the universe is transformation, life is opinion.”[6]

Don’t misunderstand what I am saying here. I am not exhorting you to hate and reject the world; to live like a hermit in a Himalayan cave. There is nothing bad or shameful about the world’s material abundance, and we are right to enjoy it. Material abundance is what gives us our daily bread and pulls our sisters and brothers out of poverty. It reflects the blessings of our creativity and work and can provide comfort and enjoyment to humdrum days.

“Love and do what you will.”[1]