The Third Act
Dear friend,
The monks are in town visiting from LA. Tonight I’ll go to the Self-Realization Fellowship’s Temple near Paddington station in London and rest for a few hours in meditation.
The energy in the temple is like a balm. It holds you and gets into you and clears out stuff that’s been hanging around—maybe for lifetimes—and yet I do stay away for extended periods, as if some kind of internal safety system puts the brakes on.
Whose safety is it concerned with?
The last time I visited the temple the oddest thing happened. On the way home, I tripped as I was stepping onto a Circle Line train to King’s Cross station and landed in a bizarre way, dislocating the little finger of my right hand at the third knuckle, the one nearest the nail. The finger became red and swollen, but not particularly painful, and I thought, “Oh well, I don’t use that one so much anyway.”
If it had been on my left hand, I wouldn’t have been so laissez-faire about it. I use that little finger a lot on the fretboard.
I snapped the finger back into place and sat wondering about the meaning of the accident. I still have no answer—except that after the service at the temple, I was feeling very high and floaty, so perhaps the answer is clear enough. I’ve some work to do in staying grounded.
I’ve always tended towards wanting to escape the world.
The way you do when you’re carried away by a piece of music, a beat on the dance floor, or a story.
Come to think of it, grounding is perhaps what this stage of my journey is about.
The kids in school brought me down to earth, back into my body. You have to be present with a group of teenagers—if not, they won’t be able to handle it. You hold space for them.
For the longest time, I’d hear people talk about “holding space” and not know what that was or how you’d do it, only to find that my work essentially is that: to be presence.
There’s a concept in coaching I came across in Hetty Einzig’s The Future of Coaching. She calls it “The Third Act.” It’s where our parents’ generation would be thinking about retirement and whatever that meant for them. For my Dad, it was sitting in his chair in the front room with the TV on. Maybe a round of golf. Three meals a day and a couple of holidays in a rental someplace. A pub lunch. Something like that.
Third Actors are asking ourselves: How can we contribute?
How do we give back to the world?
How can we support the younger ones?
For me, it’s informed by profound self-interest.
I know in my bones that life is eternal, and once this physical form has worn out, I’ll be back again. First as a completely vulnerable baby. I’ll grow and go through the cycles of becoming, and there will be another human my soul manifests—perhaps thinking their thoughts into a machine? Who knows how the world will be, but it will still be.
We make a mistake if we think we’re leaving the problems of the world to a younger generation to solve. In time, that younger generation will be us. We just won’t remember.
If I find this writing somehow, sometime in a future yet to be, I won’t know it was once these fingers that typed it. Perhaps I’ll be drawn to it in some way—who can say?
The finger I dislocated healed.
It is slightly crooked.
It reminds me to ground.
Be here.
Deepen.
Embrace service.
Like George said.
Here’s the full quote from yesterday’s writing:
“This is the true joy in life, the being used for a purpose recognised by yourself as a mighty one; the being a force of nature instead of a feverish, selfish little clod of ailments and grievances complaining that the world will not devote itself to making you happy.”
—George Bernard Shaw
Till tomorrow
Love,
Mikey