66: The Two Disciplines of Life

For most of my life, discipline meant one thing: doing what needed to be done.

Wake up early.

Work hard.

Stay focused.

Develop skills.

Continue when things become difficult.

Set a goal and organize resources around achieving it.

This is the first discipline.

It is enormously important, particularly in the first half of life.

We need to build something.

We need education, skills, a career, financial security, relationships, and the ability to support those who depend on us. None of these appear simply because we wait patiently for life to unfold.

They require effort.

The first discipline therefore pushes us outward into the world.

We interact with people. We enter organizations. We compete. We cooperate. We succeed and fail. We receive evaluations. We learn how society works.

Gradually, we build the foundation of a life.

But I am beginning to realize that there is another discipline.

I call it the second discipline.

It does not begin with doing.

It begins with allowing.

Allowing ourselves to stop.

Allowing ourselves to receive.

Allowing sadness to exist without immediately trying to fix it.

Allowing an unanswered question to remain unanswered.

Allowing an afternoon to have no measurable productivity.

Allowing ourselves simply to listen.

The first discipline asks:

What can I build?

The second asks:

What is happening inside me?

These disciplines require different environments.

The first often needs interaction with society. It needs people, goals, deadlines, feedback, responsibility, and action.

The second often needs less noise.

Solitude.

A quiet room.

Nature.

Prayer.

Writing.

A long walk or run.

An unhurried conversation.

Not because society is bad, but because the things we are trying to hear during the second discipline are much quieter.

Perhaps the first discipline accumulates experience, while the second discipline integrates experience.

During decades of living, we accumulate successes, failures, relationships, disappointments, skills, mistakes, joy, and pain.

But experience alone does not automatically become wisdom.

We need space to understand what those experiences have formed within us.

This may be particularly important in the second half of life.

Eventually, continuing to achieve more does not necessarily make life richer.

Another set of questions begins to emerge.

Who have I become?

What do I no longer need to prove?

What gives me life?

What have I been given that can now be offered to others?

What is God quietly asking me to notice?

These questions cannot always be answered by working harder.

Sometimes we need to become quiet enough to hear them.

Perhaps this is why the two disciplines ultimately belong together.

The first discipline builds the foundation.

The second creates the inner richness that can inhabit it.

And eventually, we return to the world again—but differently.

Less to prove.

Less to acquire.

Less to establish ourselves.

More to give.

The rhythm of the second half of life may therefore become:

Build.

Make room.

Listen.

Integrate.

Contribute.

The first discipline taught me how to make things happen.

The second is teaching me how to allow life to come toward me.

Perhaps a mature life requires both:

the strength to act when action is needed, and enough inner space to receive what cannot be achieved by effort alone.