Richard Rohr once said “During the second-half of life, success no longer teaches us anything. It still feels good, but we don’t learn from it. Now we learn more from failure.” What does he mean?
Ron Rolheiser, OMI
There’s a time in life when doing things is mandated, even by the Gospels. That time is the first half of life (all those years when we’re active in the workforce, caring for family, paying a mortgage, giving ourselves over to the service of others, and trying to build up the world and find meaning for ourselves). That isn’t our time then to simply sit at the feet of Jesus.
But during the second half of life, success loses its importance. To rely on success to feel good about ourselves becomes, at a point, a cancer: If we only feel important when we’ve achieved something of importance then we need to continue, repeatedly, to achieve something of importance, an impossible task.
More importantly, while success builds self-image it doesn’t necessarily build character or soul. Bluntly put, too often success inflates rather than mellows the soul. Failure, while always containing the danger of hardening the soul, is more naturally suited to deflate the ego and mellow the heart. The major task of aging is that of mellowing – grieving, forgiving, letting go, accepting vulnerability, and moving beyond the greed, ambition, competitiveness, and perpetual disappointment of youth. Like a good wine, the soul needs to be mellowed in cracked old barrels (an apt image for aging bodies) to bring out its warm, rich character. After a certain age, failure more than success is more likely to help us do that.
Finally, and perhaps most importantly, when we’re young and success still teaches us something, too often even our best work is motivated more by our need to prove something (ourselves, our talents, our goodness) than by any genuine altruism and concern for others. Our successes may actually be helping others and doing a lot of good, but, in the end, we’re trying to prove ourselves.
The task now is to become selfless, beyond proving anything, least of all our own worth.
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