We Stopped Listening to the Ancient Greeks. It’s Costing Us.

It even stretched all the way back to ancient Greeks who introduced the concept of “eugeria” which meant“a long and happy life of the pursuit of worthy goals.”  To the Greeks, the path to eugeria was work and paying it forward and working for the sake of others.

The evidence of the payback of this philosophy in ancient Greece was revealed as men of distinction typically had the “eugeria” mindset and were discovered to have much longer lives, averaging around 70 years when the normal lifespans were about 35.

For example, Socrates lived to 80; Isocrates to 98; Sophocles to 90. Some even lived to be centenarians.

Recent global research on centenarians, the fastest-growing population segment, has revealed that few stopped doing work of some form.

Work as a villain.

We ignore the importance of work in our western culture and seem to have turned it into a negative four-letter word that we can’t wait to get away from, refusing to acknowledge that work plays a key role in our overall health and longevity.

I love what Wendell Berry, conservationist, farmer, essayist, novelist, professor of English and poet says about work and retirement:

“We can say without exaggeration that the present national ambition of the United States is unemployment. People live for quitting time, for weekends, for vacations, and for retirement; moreover, this ambition seems to be classless, as true in the executive suites as on the assembly lines. One works not because the work is necessary, valuable, useful to a desirable end, or because one loves to do it, but only to be able to quit – a condition that a saner time would regard as infernal, a condemnation.”

Pretty harsh words, but true. We’ve disconnected what we do for 40–60 hours a week from life satisfaction. So many of us toil in jobs we simply tolerate until we collect enough to sail into the “golden years” often to find that the bloom on the rose of traditional, leisure-based retirement fades and reveals itself as a trojan horse with unrevealed downsides in terms of health and longevity.

In his book “Boundless Potential”, author Mark Walton tells the story of when, in 1962, distinguished educator and author, Dr. Mortimer Adler, was a guest speaker before a group of the elite of insurance executives at a million-dollar roundtable. Adler shocked the group, who expected a dose of his highly-touted executive coaching. Instead, he delivered this provocative message, at a time when retirement was a national rage (bolding is mine):

“The retirement age is coming down. But the dream come true is a nightmare. For retirement, conceived as a protracted vacation, is a form of prolonged suicide. It marks the first formal stage on the road to oblivion. Consider the loss to society and the deprivation of the individual involved when a man in the real prime of life, the mental, moral, and spiritual prime, is turned out to pasture at the decree of the calendar – someone who has the most creative and most socially useful part of his labor still in him. Here is greatness wasted on the putting greens of Long Beach or the green benches of St. Petersburg. What is the solution, or is there a solution? Just – work. Work, not to insure your retirement, but to prevent it! You will benefit greatly from any kind of work which is a challenge to that part of you which continues growing.”
Find, instead, a way to work for the sake of others and you will step up, he asserted, “from a lower to a higher grade of life.”

My position on this has won me no popularity contests as I realize I am assaulting a pseudo-entitlement that has become so deeply entrenched that it will fade only slowly as we gradually awaken to the wasted potential that it engenders.

But it is beginning to fade as we now face 20–40 years of extended post-career life phases and realize that multiple-decades of beach, bingo, bridge, backgammon, and boche ball don’t make for a fulfilling life.

We are slowly – very slowly – trending away from off-the-cliff, labor-to-leisure retirement, and toward unretirement or semi-retirement. More businesses are being started by people over 50 than any other population segment. More and more “retirees” are pivoting from their leisure-based retirement and finding meaningful work by volunteering or starting non-profit organizations or, in some way, finding engaging work, realizing that their health, energy, vitality, and sense of self-worth depends on it.

My observation, as a career/life transition coach, is that retirement stays a motivating goal because people are functioning, in their work environment, outside of their core talents and strengths, and suppressing deep inner dreams or passions in favor of earning and conforming to cultural beliefs and expectations.

Retirement is thus viewed, as one answerer to the question so aptly stated, as a way to get away from “the politics in the workplace and being accountable to the system every single day for 8 – 10 hours.”

We all want freedom. Retirement seems to offer that. But freedom without purpose has few upsides.

As I engage coaching clients who are approaching the generally accepted retirement phase of life, I encourage viewing the third-age of life – between end-of-career and true old age – as an opportunity for a balanced lifestyle of labor, leisure, and learning that dusts off and pays forward accumulated skills, talents, and experiences in the service of others.

That’s “eugeria” for the 21st century.