"There is much evidence on several levels that there are at least two major tasks to human life. The first task is to build a strong "container" or identity; the second is to find the contents that the container was meant to hold. The first task we take for granted as the purpose of life, which does not mean we do it well. The second task, I am told, is more encountered than sought; few arrive it with much preplanning, purpose or passion. So you might wonder if there is much point in providing a guide to the territory ahead of time. Yet that is exactly why we must. It is vitally important to know what is coming and being offered to all of us.
We alre "first-half-of-life culture" largely concerned about surviving successfully. Probably most cultures and individuals across history have been situated in the first half of their own development up to now, because that is all they had time for. We all try to do what seems like the task that life first hands us: establishing an identity, a home, relationships, friends, community, security, and building a proper platform for our only life.
But it takes us much longer to find "the task within the task," as I like to call it: what we are really doing when we are doing what we are doing."
