Half Time

And then there's midlife.

Bob Buford calls it "Halftime," the second half of one's lifetime. I don't know if you've heard of Thomas Jefferson. Maybe you've known him as once the president of the most powerful nation in the world today.

He reached halftime and this was what he wrote about it in Febraury 27, 1793: "The motion of my blood no longer keeps time with the tumult of the world. It leads me to seek for happiness in the lap and love of my family, in the society of my neighbors and my books, in the wholesome occupations of my farm and my affairs, in an interest or affection in every bud that opens, in every breath that flows around me."

He described the "firsthalf" of his life as follows: "worn down with labors from morning to night, and day to day, knowing them as fruitless to others as they are vexations to myself .... cut off from my family and friends, my affairs abandoned to chaos and derangement, in short giving everything I love in exchange for everything I hate."

Jefferson reached a decision on how he'd invest the second half of his life. He is American, but his heart journey is very similar to the one many middle-aged men and women travel today.

It's a universal longing.