Transformation: Part III – Transformative Second Journey

The Second Journey

Our second half of life has the potential for radical transformation. There is an inevitable shift that takes place as our first half of life labor, which entails laying foundations and acquiring recognition reaches its crescendo. We move our energy from constructing a container for our life to seeking to understand the value of its contents. This moment in time is pregnant with possibilities. The challenge is to recognize what those possibilities are, and to take ownership of the ones that most nearly reflect our authentic self, the being rather than the doing part of who we are.

This would be a time to take stock of what we have accrued, not necessarily in the material realm. Rather, the life lessons we have learned, the wisdom we have gained and the avenues of service that might be opening for us, service that gives life to us as we give to others.

This change point may occur in a time of loss or disillusionment, at a time we are forced to reevaluate nearly everything in our lives, maybe after a great let down or even at the end of a season of great success. We may ask, “what now?”

Homer’s great classic, The Odyssey alludes to this process of transformational change. Beyond the heart-stopping encounter with the Cyclops and the nail-biting challenge of the Sirens magical song, there is a deep story that is hidden in the encounter between Odysseus and the blind prophet, Tiresias. Midway through his journey Odysseus comes face to face with Tiresias, who tells him what will occur as he continues his journey home. Tiresias also prophesies of a second journey that Odysseus must take. He must take with him a “well cut oar,” an oar much like the one that propelled him on his quest as the great hero. He will carry this oar to a country that has never seen the sea. The people there have never tasted salt and know nothing of ships. He will meet a stranger who will ask about the “winnowing fan” he is carrying.

This part of Homer’s story is left in the raw. We do not hear of the outcome. Helen Luke picks this story up in her book Old Age. In it we discover her imagined outcome of the story of the second journey.

In her account the stranger who asks about “the winnowing fan” brings insight to Odysseus as he ponders the image of the “well cut oar” and its relationship to the winnowing fan.

"Remember only what the oar has meant to you through the many years of your life, Odysseus…Do you not know that your travels, your achievements and failures, the gains and losses which your winged ship carried you were all slowly forging you a ‘winnowing fan’? Now that the harvest is gathered and you stand in the autumn of your life, your oar is no longer a driving force carrying you over the oceans of your inner and outer worlds, but a spirit discriminating wisdom, separating moment by moment the wheat from the chaff, so that you may know in both wheat and chaff their meaning and their value in the pattern of the universe."

It is only in the second half of life as we are able to evaluate the meaning of our first journey that we can bring wisdom to bear on what lies ahead. It is then that we make our most valuable contributions to our community and the world, because it is then that the forging of the first half of our lives provides the material of transformative living…if we choose to make that second journey.

In Luke’s account of the second journey, when Odysseus is instructed to plant his well cut oar, he inquires why he should do so rather than take it back home. The answer comes, “To leave it here is like a gift of your lifetime’s effort to people who live here…They will see it and begin to ask questions…”

What is your “well cut oar”?

Writing Prompt for the Week: Second Journey