Second acts in American lives, and third acts, too
Browsing the Internet the other day I came upon a Time magazine story from 40 years ago headlined “Second Acts in American Lives.” It was about people taking up new careers in middle age. Curious, I googled the F. Scott Fitzgerald quote the headline alluded to, and immediately came upon another piece from just four years ago in Wired with a similar headline: “No Second Acts?” It was about … people taking up new careers in middle age.
What is interesting about this is that the authors of both stories not only miss the point of Fitzgerald’s remark, but also don’t seem to know anything about three-act plays. The second act is the one where complication enters and confrontation takes place. It’s the development section. Fitzgerald may well have had in mind the old saying that “the second act is the best.” At any rate, what he was suggesting was that American lives tend toward arrested development. I certainly don’t think he had career changes in mind.
There is a tradition among American writers — from Thoreau’s lamenting “a poor immortal soul …creeping down the road of life, pushing before it a barn seventy-five feet by forty” to Henry Miller’s ranting about the Cosmodemonic Telegraph Company — the obvious point of which is that living is not identical with making one. In assuming that a mid-life employment opportunity represents a second act in life, the aforementioned articles serve as perfect examples of the mentality this tradition has decried.
The point Fitzgerald was making is different from that — though the two are connected. He was suggesting that the form of American lives is truncated, lacking a middle and an end, and so deprived not only of development but also of completion and resolution. The problem is that Americans don’t want the first act to end and so try to cram the whole of life into it. We want success while we’re young enough to enjoy it and we want to stay young forever.
The career factor is crucial because we tend to be identified by what we do for a living. Lose your job when you’re young, and you’re likely to feel as if your life is going nowhere. Lose it when you’re older, and you may well feel as if your life is over.
There’s a scene at the end of the film The Candidate, when the Robert Redford character has won the election, and he turns to his campaign manager and asks, “What do we do now?” I always felt that was what I was going to wonder the day I retired. After all, I liked what I did for a living, and the older I got the more I identified with it. My final stint as book-review editor for the Philadelphia Inquirer was the best job I ever had. But for having to constantly play defense against space and budget cuts, it would have been perfect. And, had the powers that be not decided they wanted the job done differently from the way I was doing it, I wouldn’t have retired when I did.
As it happened, the void I was afraid would open up when I didn’t have a job to go to has so far remained closed. This is not to say retirement hasn’t been accompanied by unnerving moments. I notice things now that I wouldn’t have before because I was too preoccupied with the details of my job. I was too busy, for instance, to notice how old I actually am. To be sure, I’m not doddering yet. My faculties appear intact, I still walk a few miles most days at a decent clip, but I can’t say I’m thrilled that the white-bearded reflection in the store-front window is mine.
On the other hand, it is the time to notice things that has so far proved to be the greatest boon of retirement. I still get up early, sometimes before the sun, because it’s my favorite time of day, quiet and full of promise, and now I actually pay attention to the sky growing brighter and the shape and color of the clouds as the light strikes them. I live right off the Italian Market, and when I stroll up Ninth Street at the start of the day it’s fascinating to see the market coming to life. Everybody else is heading to work or to school, but not me. I’m right back to where I was when I was a little kid and hadn’t started school yet and could just look at what was going on around me.
What I notice most of all is a change in tempo. I wasn’t really aware, until I retired, of how tightly wound I was. We Americans, I fear, tend to live our lives at a relentless presto. This high-speed moto perpetuo detracts as much from the quality of our lives as our failure to shape them into three acts. My own life has settled into a nice andante moderato, an easy-going stroll. This has been accompanied by a certain equanimity. I find myself content, from this point on, to saunter my way toward what Rabelais called “a great perhaps.”
Latest posts by Frank Wilson (Posts)
- An illusion of precision - September 9, 2015
- Watching the passing scene - October 28, 2013
- To see like a child - June 26, 2013
- Riffing and digressions - January 21, 2013
- Life is a parenthesis between one darkness and another - September 13, 2012
Print This Post
I love your evocation of the pleasures of strolling through the Italian Market in the early morning. Such a nice idea–to stroll. You make me want to do more of it.
I think your latest occupation, Frank, is as premiere Philadelphia boulevardier.
Thanks, Paula. I think you’re right. I’m already getting known as a flaneur.