A Brag Sheet for the Second Half of Life

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By Kate Noonan

A Brag Sheet for the Second Half of Life

I am writing my child’s brag sheet, as you do when your child is a junior in high school and needs to prepare for the arduous college application process. As a parent I find the college application season with its subsequent acceptances and rejections to be one of the most difficult parenting seasons. While I was pondering the list of attributes that inhabit and exemplify my 17 year old I began to wonder how my brag sheet would read. I chuckled thinking of asking a handful of friends or colleagues to fill in a brag sheet for me. For a brief moment I worried, is a brag sheet in your 50’s a precursor to a eulogy?

Thankfully, who I want to be now is different from who I wanted to be at 17. The good, the bad and the ugly of life has molded me into a better version of myself. David Brooks, the New York Times Op-Ed columnist and author, refers to the same type of shift many of us often experience in our second half of life in his book: The Second Mountain. He writes: “Many In American society scale the mountain of success only to feel let down by our achievements or to get knocked off this mountain to find ourselves in seasons of deep suffering. There is a possibility in these depths to realize that down in the substrate flowing from all of the tender places there is a fundamental desire to care. A yearning to transcend the self and care for others, to make this discovery readies us to set out for our second mountain, not a mountain that we conquer but one that conquers us. As we devote ourselves to a calling to addressing some problem or injustice.”

How will our second half of life’s brag sheet read? The question presents itself: who are we called to be as we transcend our first half of life selves? I would like my brag sheet to clearly state I care for others as a contributing member of my family, my faith community and my neighborhood. May one of my qualities be whole and empathetic listening. I find humor, bringing levity to situations invaluable and really hope this attribute is on the list. A few more important attributes I hope I am honing are thinking of others more than myself, being a good friend and acting with kindness even when something difficult has to be said. A subtle skill, much underrated and often endears me to myself is practicing the pause. Finally, I hope my actions say more than my words.

Life school is hard and scaling the mountain a second time is demanding. Living a life practicing the principles I strive to embody makes it easier. It’s given me a clear vision; a bigger yes. I want my energy focused on genuine kind and generous interactions.
Take some time with your friends while sitting around the fire pit or with a glass of wine and work on each other’s brag sheets. Talk sincerely about how you have cared for one another and those around you. As you share with one another you’ll witness the wonderful impactful interactions that make up your life. Your brag sheet is already impressive and if it needs some tweaking there is no time like the present

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