I am a long-time journal writer and great fan of keeping a journal. I might even be called an evangelist for a daily journal writing practice. This past spring I designed and taught a course, Conversations in the Third Act, for our Senior College. A component of that course was looking back over the life lived and forward to what lies ahead and doing so in writing.
In drama, the third act features the resolution of the story and its subplots. In this act, the main tensions of the story are brought to their most intense point and the dramatic question answered, leaving the protagonist and other characters with a new sense of who they really are. Our fifth or sixth or seventh decade of life is the Third Act of our lives.
The goal of all life, the end point, death is what lies in front of us. In the third act of life it looms larger than it has before and is much more a part of consciousness. To be fully alive is to know that death lies ahead.
Between here and death, there is a lot of territory. Work to be done to deal with things left undone, to reconcile ourselves to our past, to seriously consider the story we have been living with an eye especially toward any changes we want to make in the remaining years.
A friend of mine, a woman in her mid-70's, told me that she wishes she could read about this life period as she could about midlife. The issues of midlife are not hers. She wrestles with the conflict between the desire to do and the body that no longer wants to. With the bubbling up of creative possibilities that she does not know she can bring to fruition. All of us in the third act are faced with having to prioritize in a new way, to come to terms with the certain knowledge that if there is something we want to do, want to create, we have to get down to work now because time is passing swiftly.
How to wrestle with these issues without succumbing to despair or melancholy and regret is a major concern. What does it mean to become old? How do we come to terms with a body, a face that is not the face or body I carry in my mind's eye of myself? How do we make sense of the story we have lived and consider how we want to live the last chapters?
Think of Janus, the Roman god of the threshold, who looks back where we have been and forward to where we are going. This is the god of the Third Act.
Life review writing is a means of intentionally reflecting on the experiences and events from our past and drawing meaning from those experiences, especially as it affects our present lives and the future. Think of Janus, the Roman god of the threshold, looking backward and forward at the same time. In life writing, we look back at the life we have lived and forward to the life yet to be lived.
Psychologist James Pennebaker, a professor in the Department of Psychology at The University of Texas at Austin is a pioneer in the study of using expressive writing as a route to healing. His research has shown that short-term focused writing can have a beneficial effect.
Life review is important for many reasons . . . it can help us deal with unfinished business, to plan for retirement, for pursuing goals that we would still like to achieve and for sharing what we have learned from the past with our children, grandchildren and generations yet to come. In life writing you will have an opportunity to reflect on
who you are now
how you got here
where you are going