Second (or Third… or Fourth) Mountaining
In The Second Mountain, David Brooks shares a metaphor for the shape of a life. We begin on the first mountain, the climb of achievement, identity, independence, success. Then, often through disappointment or disruption, we pass through a valley. On the other side rises the second mountain, a life organised around commitment, service, love, and giving ourselves to something beyond our own advancement.
It’s a kind of moral shift or awaken (to use a fancy word!). “From résumé virtues to eulogy virtues”. From self-building to self-giving - kind of, but also a mindfulness about legacy.
But my pondering, while I read, is, there aren’t just two mountains.
There could be three. Or four. Or more.
And so rather than it feeling like a liberation to discover your second mountain, it’s that feeling when you think you are at the top and then you see the summit up ahead. That’s why it can feel exhausting. We’ve perhaps tried to scale the second mountain before, and got knocked down, or rerouted.
I wrote some notes to explore my thoughts. Full disclosure - I have not finished the book yet!!
The First Mountain: Proving Yourself
The first mountain is culturally celebrated. It’s the LinkedIn years, if LinkedIn was what it is now but then (because my fist mountain most definitely did not involve LinkedIn). (!) The ambition years. The “Who am I going to be?” years. The World is my Oyster years, even.
We build careers. We build reputations. Perhaps we built Personal Brands (before we knew that’s what we were doing). We chase autonomy and recognition. We measure progress in promotions and pay rises and milestones. Maybe even mortgages. Car park spaces.
This mountain is not wrong. I kind of started to feel like it was a bad thing. But David doesn’t condemn it. It’s a necessary stage of development, building a self strong enough to later give away. Which I think almost needs to be told at the beginning of our career. I once ran a graduate and apprenticeship programme ( very much loved role), I would definitely have booked a talk on first and second mountain thinking as part of the programme. The message being - go for it, give it everything, but also know that if you start to feel out of sync it isn’t everything.
So first mountain is bold, and that’s ok. And then eventually, something shifts.
Sometimes there’s a dramatic valley - burnout, divorce, redundancy, grief.
Sometimes it’s more of a lurking feeling - a nagging sense that achievement alone isn’t enough, and perhaps success can look different.
So we begin to ask different questions.
The Second Mountain: Giving Yourself
The second mountain is about commitment and promises. Marriage. Parenthood. Community. Faith. Vocation. Something else other than our solo ambitions. Meaning expands when the self stops being the centre of attention.
But here’s where modern life, or perhaps my thinking, complicates the metaphor.
Because what if commitment itself shifts form? What if second mountain is about someone else, and putting yourself last leads to the third mountain of realsing that you want to have a bit more first mountain again.
For example, what if…
Mountain One: Build a career. Establish independence. Prove capability.
Mountain Two: Redirect energy into motherhood or caregiving. Deep commitment. Often invisible labour. Identity reshaped around others.
Mountain Three: Children grow. The house quietens. The intense caregiving years end. The career landscape has changed. The self has changed.
And there it is again, the question of Is this it? Now what?
This isn’t simply a continuation of the second mountain. Psychologically, it can feel like standing at the base of something entirely new.
Each time, we enter another valley.
Each time, the old logic stops working.
Each time, we are presented with new challenges (often financial, health or caring based)
David presents a sequential shift from first mountain to second, from individualism to commitment. But in a longer lifespan, especially one that spans multiple careers and identities, we may experience several cycles of ascent and descent.
Not because we are unstable.
Not because we chose wrongly.
But because life keeps unfolding.
Now he might cover this later in the book (as I said I just started, but felt like I needed to capture some thoughts).
Reinvention Fatigue
I guess my thoughts are around a recognition that reinvention, in midlife, might not be your first rodeo. Whether you acknowledge the changes and shifts you’ve already navigated, or you are still processing. A midlifer has already reinvented a few times. Many of us are not on our “second act.” We’re on our fourth, fifth, six iteration of self.
Student.
Professional.
Parent.
Returner.
Entrepreneur.
Carer.
Single again.
Partnered differently.
Every reinvention asks something of us:
Learn again.
Risk again.
Redefine again.
Let go again.
That is brave. But it is also tiring. And sometimes we’ve done it better than others.
We don’t usually get one big pivot in life.
The Gift of Having Climbed Before
If you are standing in another valley asking “Now what?” especially for the third or fourth time, it doesn’t mean you’re behind or you failed the first pivot (second mountain). It means you are alive to change.
The fourth mountain is not a failure of the first three. It’s evidence that growth did not stop. And here’s the good news:
You know how to climb.
You know how valleys feel.
You know that disorientation passes.
Deepest fulfilment comes through commitment, the second mountain. Your expansion on that metaphor acknowledges something equally important: life is longer, more nonlinear, and more layered than two tidy peaks.
Perhaps we are living many seasons instead. That we have to constantly be ready to change, to revaluate, to shape shift.
And each time to do, you are not starting from zero. You are starting from experience.
The mountain climber doesnt stop climbing mountains when the reach the top, they just get better at the navigation.
My reading continues... If you’ve read the book, Second Mountain, I’d love to know your thoughts.