“The retirement age is coming down from 70, to 65, to 60 and may, in the course of the next 25 years, go below that.
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 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.
It is finally time to distill wisdom from experience and to give of that wisdom.”
Darn! I wish I’d come up with that last line.
The statement belongs to the late Dr. Mortimer Adler, renowned educator and author. Dr. Adler had been invited onboard the ocean-liner Queen Mary to a luxurious meeting facility filled with the creme-de-la-creme of insurance executives who were gathered for a Million Dollar Roundtable of the National Association of Life Underwriters. Dr. Adler was asked to speak to this illustrious group “to aid in their continuing search for self-development.”
The year was 1962, almost 6 decades ago. Adler turned the tables on the expectations of this group by likening the American retirement dream to digging a premature grave.
I found this story in the excellent book by Mark S. Walton entitled “Boundless Potential: Transform Your Brain, Unleash Your Talents, Reinvent Your Work in Midlife and Beyond.”
Adler’s assertion rings true today. Walton continues Adler’s message: “Find a way to work for the sake of others and you will step up” Adler asserted, “from a lower to a higher grade of life.”
Our pre-occupation with retirement has turned “work” into another unattractive four-letter word for many. For nearly a century now we have re-categorized work into something we tolerate for 35-45 years with the goal to get away from it so we can hopefully do what we really wanted to do 45 years before. That is assuming we knew back then.
But research tells us that we abandon work at our own peril.
A study of 83,000 Americans 65 and older published in Preventing Chronic Disease, a publication of the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention found that being unemployed or retired was associated with the greatest risk of poor health.
Jay Olshansky, a professor at the Chicago’s School of Public Health agrees with the article, saying: “We know that remaining in the labor force is good for us. Not working can lead to overall poorer health.”
Making it the best of four-letter words
In his 1989 best-selling business book “The Age of Unreason”, Charles Handy offered some prescient advice about work and its role in our evolving society. He points out that 50-60 years ago (from 1989) people signed on for work expecting to work 100,000 hours. His formula: 47 hrs/week x 47 weeks/year x 47 years (age 18-65). But now that number is closer to 50,000 hours (37 x 37 x 37) as technology enables companies to do more with fewer bits of our time, as we enter the job force later (avg: 22-24), and with a trend of people retiring earlier.
If we factor in a longevity bonus of 15-30 years that is now becoming more of a reality, I don’t think I’m too far off Handy’s mark by suggesting that we not only risk our health and longevity when we stop working, but we are also robbing society of 50,000 hours of productivity, creativity, and contribution back to mankind.
In Handy’s words:
“Those unused 50,000 hours can be our opportunity to discover the missing bits of ourselves, to explore new talents, to add variety to ordinary weeks, to meet new people, and to learn new skills. Those unused hours can add up to a huge new resource for society rather than a pile of unwanted people if we start thinking positively, if we find a way to pay for it, and if, first of all, we start redefining “work” so that it no longer means only a job. It is not the devil who finds work for idle hands to do, it is our own human instincts which make us want to contribute to our world, to be useful, and to matter in some way to other people; to have a reason to get up in the morning.”
Some thirty years ago, Handy put a dagger into the heart of the prevailing concept of retirement with his appeal to his readers to consider work the purpose of life. He lists “the three P’s at the heart of life – purpose, pattern, people”. Work provides all three.
Yet, still today, so many can’t wait to abandon work to pursue – – – what? The “what” becomes the rub. For 2 out of 3 retirees, the “what” tends to be shallow and short-term. Garage cleaned and re-organized, golf lessons scheduled, checking off the travel bucket list, alarm clock disabled, pigging out on deferred Netflix series, self-indulgence to the max. One or two years in, those irritating questions surface: “Is this all there is?” “How am I relevant?” “Why am I feeling bored?” “Can I get my old identity back?”
The AgeWave organization confirmed, in their survey of 50,000 retired Baby Boomers that despite 80-90% of pre-retirees being confident they would realize their retirement dreams and goals, only 40% of retirees achieved those happiness and retirement dreams. Vitality, energy, and still-fresh skills are atrophied and productive years wasted.
Active Wisdom
I wrote about the concept of “active wisdom” last year in this article about purpose. It’s a term coined by anthropologist, activist, and writer Mary Catherine Bateson. She calls it a “new stage” where “wisdom is reaped from years of experience and living.” She calls it the “most acceptable and positive trait associated with longevity.”
Purpose brings the “why”. Active wisdom brings the “what.”
If you’re past 40 and can fog a mirror, you’ve got “active wisdom.” Our culture needs it spread around, although it doesn’t give a rip about encouraging you to spread it. It’s more inclined to think of you as a drag on society and prefer that you shuffle off to a warehouse, out of sight, out of the way, out of mind.
Adler had it right:
“It is finally time to distill wisdom from experience and to give of that wisdom. Find a way to work for the sake of others and you will step up from a lower to a higher grade of life.”
Let’s empty the warehouses!!
Love to hear from you with your thoughts on all this. Leave us a comment below or drop an email to gary@makeagingwork.com with your feedback. I’m doing these articles weekly, so if you aren’t on our mailing list and would like to receive future articles, join our email list at www.makeagingwork.com.
Beware the Mid-life Default Mode (or How to Avoid Becoming a Pinprick)
Autopilot is death. Flipping the switch is hard.
I’m stealing these words from Barbara Bradley Hagerty, NPR correspondent and author of one of my favorite books and one I’ve referenced before: “Life Reimagined: The Science, Art, and Opportunity of Midlife.”
I decided I would just let BBH do most of the talking this week because she makes such a powerful point in her epilogue about the significance of the transitions we face at mid-life.
Living from the outside, headed for autopilot at midlife
She starts by pointing out her observation that morning-time commercials on network news are aimed at middle-aged women to peddle facial creams and wrinkle-shrinking treatments. Evening news is geared to both men and women past their prime, with “Cialis ads and medication for arthritis pain.”
Temporal, surface solutions, trying to hang onto youth.
All devoid of “how you think, how you engage your mind, your marriage, your career.” All that stuff is harder, but it works.
I’ll let Barbara take it from here:
What does a life “narrowed to a pinprick” look like? Maybe it’s what follows a vocation-to-vacation retirement. Research has informed us that full-stop retirees watch, on average, 49 hours of TV a week. We know, sadly, that the highest number of suicides in our country occur amongst men over 75. Health care professionals are expressing concern about the epidemic of loneliness. Harvard Business Review reports that 40% of U.S. adults report feeling lonely. I suspect that that percentage would be much greater if the study were narrowed to those at mid-life or beyond.
We continue to fill facilities with those seeking autopilot sporting an aging biology that still knows only growth or decay. The biology isn’t done yet, but the mindset is.
Pinprick is a choice
Hagerty is right – it’s a battle to avoid autopilot. The draw is strong. We’ve been told for decades that we’ve earned the right to become a pinprick and convinced that it’s expected and accepted. No warning labels on this life transition. Just do what the masses do and narrow it down. Move to that warehouse, wind down, forget intention, energy and effort.
How do you know when you are headed to becoming a pinprick? If the shoe fits – – –
I’ll let Barbara end it:
Are You Fearful of Old Age? What Age is “Old” to You?
I guess I’m supposed to be concerned about my advancing age. I get a daily reminder as I roll out of the sack every morning. But, so far, I’ve been able to keep it off my mental calendar.
Maybe someday, when all seventy-eleven balls I have in the air come down.
I’m old by current cultural standards. Heck, if I were beholden to living the average male American lifespan (78.54 years, according to World Bank), you would have missed my funeral, which is OK because most people will anyhow if the weather is bad.
Early checkout is not on my radar.
I look, act, and feel younger than what I think most people call “old.” It’s not an accident. Since my 40s, I’ve felt that it wouldn’t be difficult to avoid being considered old before it actually happens, whenever that may be. I’ve worked to be increasingly aware of the lifestyle choices that slow the aging process and more diligent in putting them into action in my own life.
Those center around the acronym D-A-R-E, which I learned years ago from reading “Dare to Be 100” by Dr. Walter Bortz, a transformational book for me.
It’s a pretty simple equation but not one to be considered easy, especially the “A” part. It’s the toughest because the other three don’t get enacted unless the “A” is in place and working.
As Dr. Bortz says:
He also reminds us that chance favors the prepared person.
In my opinion, early old is largely a choice. We’re pretty good, especially in highly-developed (and supposedly more educated and aware) western cultures, at devising ways to bring “old” on ourselves ahead of schedule.
On average we die at an age that is only 2/3 of our current benchmarked full-life biological potential (Google up Jeanne Calment of Paris). Most of that is due to the lifestyle choices we make early in life and carry into mid-life where they manifest into an accelerated downward slope of aging unless compensated for.
What age is “old” to me? I guess I personally would probably have to start giving in to some “oldness” around 95–100. I haven’t, however, programmed that into the 25-year plan that I try to keep rolling in front of me.
Here’s the “die young as late as possible” model for aging I subscribe to that I borrowed from the late executive coach, Ms. Helen Harkness, and that I featured in one of my blog articles.
At 79, I like the sound and feel of still being in my second mid-life. It feels right since I’m finding a surprising reserve in the old gas tank (knees and feet notwithstanding).
I also like the brevity of the “old-old and 2-3 years to live” except that I favor 2-3 minutes instead of years.
I still envision going face down in a trout stream having just fooled a 20″ rainbow.
At somewhere around 110.
What is “old” to you? Share your view with a comment below.
Is It Possible For Scientists To Add 20 Years To Life Expectancy?
Reverse? Stop? Cure?
Do we really think about how ridiculous the idea is? Why is it such a common question? Why do we seem to be unable to accept the realities of our existence and show such a fear of dying?
With death a natural part of living, how about accepting it as a new adventure?
Reversing aging defies physics and, last I heard, physics still seems to be pretty solid science.
I’ll hand it to the Kurzweil’s, de Gray’s, Venter’s, Diamandis’s, Sinclair’s of the world – they’ve found a way to keep the venture funds coming, the book sales cooking, and speaking engagements going as we flock to the intrigue of their claims.
Let’s dial it back a notch.
We choose to ignore it.
We sit back and hope that medical science will continue to come up with miracle solutions to extend our life expectancy when we already have solutions.
I get sideways quickly with this whole mindset that seems to want to count on science to come up with solutions to problems that we generate because of our crappy lifestyles.
We want science to develop a magic pill or shot or kryptonite substance that will allow us to live a longer life of comfort, convenience, and conformity while ignoring the fact that it is that very lifestyle that keeps our life expectancy relatively short.
We come equipped with the solution – it’s called the birthright of good health.
Consider this: we are born healthy, with the rare exceptions of those unfortunates who start life with ”blueprint errors” or birth defects. Nearly all of us have a birthright to good health. It’s a magnificent assembly of 30-40 trillion cells that are miraculously kludged together into an incredibly complex 24×7 immune system committed to protecting us from all the nefarious creatures and habits that threaten that good health.
We are magnificently talented at screwing up that birthright.
Let me count the ways:
Dr. David Katz is a physician at the Yale School of Medicine and the founder of an organization called the Academy of Lifestyle Medicine. He nailed it with this quote:
Sage advice in a world that wants miracle cures but won’t show much interest in the truth about good health.
Retirement: Is Yours Running to Something? Or From Something? Or Just Plain Stuck?
Are you being pulled by aspiration, pushed by desperation, or just drifting in cultural sludge in your third age?
Given that 2 of 3 retirees enter retirement without a non-financial plan, drifting seems to be the default.
“Hey, no problem – what’s the big deal? Retirement will take care of itself”, they say.
Sorry. Guess again, bunko.
Entering retirement can be like an iceberg – 10% we may know about and consider in advance, 90% we may not. Many twists and turns can be expected yet retirement contingency plans remain rare.
I thought about this as I read the following excerpt from Chip Conley’s daily Modern Elder Academy blog. It’s a guest post provided by 80-year old Pat Whitty, a Certified Health Coach and “Modern Elder Whisperer.” He’s a regular attendee at Conley’s Modern Elder Academy (MEA) gatherings.
Pat and I just met this week via Zoom. Wow, do his message and life travels resonate. Maybe it will for you as well.
Two parts of Pat’s story stand out (there is a lot more to learn which I look forward to). One, he lost 55 pounds in his seventies and transformed his health. Two, he decided to abandon the corporate world and start a new business at 78.
Can we all agree that Pat is an outlier in both categories?
Here’s the article. Enjoy and ponder (the bolding is mine):
Drifting into and through the retirement years is the default mode for many, perhaps most. No chance of that with Pat. Retirement isn’t on his radar.
But living past 100 is.
I like his chances – if for no other reason than it’s his aspiration.
Does your third age have an aspiration component? Let us know with a comment below.
How Is It OK That We’re Meant to Work a 9-5 for 40-plus Years Then Retire? Maybe We’ve Been Bamboozled!
Somewhere along the way over the last century, somebody crafted a manual that made the default life plan to “work-from-9–5-for-40-years” and then bail out to non-work.
That makes it sound like work is bad, something to avoid.
How does it happen that we turn work into something to escape from when biological research tells us that leaving work completely is detrimental to our health? We are designed to work, to grow, to learn. Work is known to be a key component of healthy longevity. But today we seem to turn it into a nasty four-letter word that we can’t wait to get away from.
The fact is, western society has been set up this way for a very long time. It has been since the advent of the industrial revolution and our current educational system. We can easily become pawns in this system which is designed to turn us into “factory workers.” Still today we get sucked into the linear-life plan that looks like this:
A century ago, our culture started building a corporate system designed around hiring the cheapest labor possible and defining the rules by which they can function (i.e. work). The educational system moved into lockstep by dropping us into a room with 30 other pawns to teach a simple formula which marketing guru Seth Godin describes as being taught to become a “factory worker”:
But it’s changing because (1) technology has changed the formula and we have many more options and (2) we have awakened to the fact that this model pays little attention to matching innate, unique skills up with the work. This mismatch might just speak to the high level of job dissatisfaction that exists today – and to why most people can’t wait to escape into retirement.
Again, Seth Godin says it beautifully in his book “Linchpin. Are You Indispensable?”
We’re getting smarter – I think!
We are awakening to the fact that we have better alternatives to this model and that we can find ways to put our unique and innate talents to better and more motivating work. The old system doesn’t want our uniqueness and dreams to surface because then we aren’t likely to be compliant enough. But with the advent of technology, especially the internet, and the opportunities that abound therein, the old system has less of a hold on keeping us as factory workers.
Still, most continue to cling to the old model although the work is uninspiring and out of step with natural talents. Why? For the money and the false reality of a happy, carefree retirement and because they see only risk stepping outside that system.
Corporate life today may be the most vulnerable spot to be as our economy becomes more global and as technology accelerates the pace of disruption of entire industries. I see it week to week as I craft resumes and LinkedIn profiles for healthcare executives who have become unexpected victims of today’s corporate volatility. Many are in the twilight of their careers; few were prepared for the “transition” or have given thought to what will follow their career.
Thinking smart in the retirement years.
I remember a presentation by Dr. Ken Dychtwald, founder of the AgeWave organization in which he profiled perhaps the most sensible life model to apply to the retirement years. He calls it the:
It’s based on the simple principle of mixing education, work/family, and leisure throughout the lifespan. He makes the point that more of our young people are viewing their lives through this lens.
It also makes sense for the retirement years: moving in and out of work, learning, and leisure at the pace and frequency of your choice.
It’s a platform for a healthier third age. Safeguards against sedentary living; living with a sense of purpose; continuing to be a producer and not just a consumer; forcing present-moment living by eliminating the regrets of the past and fears of the future.
Maybe even solving a world problem or two.
Do you have a model like this? Are you spreading your life over more than just leisure living? Does your retirement plan look something like this? We’d love to know – leave us a comment below. And tell your friends about our weekly articles from www.makeagingwork.com.
It’s Not Easy Being a Hypocrite!
I have a confession to make.
This is embarrassing! Really embarrassing.
Look up “hypocrite” in Merriam Webster – you’ll find my name.
I signed up for Netflix this week!
I get it if you hit the unsubscribe button. You are legitimately accurate to claim “said blogger speaketh from both sides of mouth.”
You see, across numerous blog articles I’ve pilloried Netflix as the evil twin that teams with the La-Z-Boy to draw retirees into the dangers of sedentary living, mind-candy, and away from the treadmill and healthy brain activities.
How did it happen?
At the risk of sounding moderately Luddite, we just recently upgraded to a full-on smart TV. Not surprisingly, it came pre-loaded with Netflix and other black hole apps that need only our credit card number to activate and begin reducing the synaptic connections in our brains.
I will confess to also being less than my own man through this, having succumbed to the insistence of devoted (and now fellow) Netflixers that “you’ve got to watch this or that movie or this or that series or this or that documentary.”
To the credit of those pushing this button, the suggestions have generally been aimed at the 3-5% of Netflix that isn’t wasteland. So it was that my first venture into the swamp was a good one. I experienced the highly acclaimed and recommended “The Social Dilemma” documentary which should scare the s**t out of anyone whose brain hasn’t already been taken over by Zuckerburg.
But then, I slid into hypocrisy and wasted two evenings on three episodes of “Longmire”, only because my wife liked the books, we are from Wyoming, and Longmire is a sheriff in a non-existent town in Wyoming. He keeps busy staying sober and entwining himself in some pretty cheesy plots. Three episodes of cheese was more than enough and the rest of the series will go unwatched.
Here’s why I’m ranting and feeling guilty:
I have another problem: I’m on a heady personal mission that requires focus while I suffer from a near-terminal case of “shiny object syndrome.” Those two things, folks, don’t work well together.
As an obsessive learner and accumulator of knowledge (not to be confused with wisdom, the latter of which I’m still waiting to arrive) I’m drawn to every “shiny” article headline offered up by way too many sites I’ve subscribed to. Or to the new book title that somehow enters my attention stream.
Or, now, to Netflix.
I’ve “bragged” about reading over 700 books over the last 15 years (I stopped keeping track three years ago at around 700). You won’t hear that again because that too is embarrassing. I now realize I would be further ahead if I had taken the top 35 “life-changers” and read them 20 times each.
35 x 20 is focused growth. 700 is scattered and diluted attention.
700 books screams “procrastination.” Netflix does too.
This is all kinda raw right now because the Netflix decision happened just as I was finishing a book entitled “Hyperfocus: How To Be More Productive In A World of Distractions” (I’m already re-reading it!). The author, Chris Bailey, had me as his avatar when he wrote it – scattered, unfocused, distracted, diluted, unproductive – and proceeded to bludgeon me with examples of how I’ve allowed today’s world of distractions to slow my mission.
So I did the logical thing and validated Bailey’s research on why we are becoming less productive – I ordered Netflix.
My guilt should be self-evident.
Three hours of Longmire could have just as easily been three hours of sleep, 500-1000 words into one of the three books I’ve started, a back-patio conversation with my roommate of 50 years, 2-3 more Quora posts, some serious work on the driving range with my 22-degree hybrid.
You get the point.
Netflix versus Resurrection of Purpose
OK, so I’m over-zealous on this topic. Mindless relaxation has its place in everyone’s life – a way to recharge, to unwind, and relieve stress.
My concern – within my mission – is that we’re overdoing it, especially in the retirement years. Mounds of research have confirmed that the American male spends, on average, over 40 hours per week watching television.
Would we, if we put it up against this simple “productivity” graph extracted from “Hyperfocus?”
I understand. As we’ve progressed into our retirement years, we’ve been subtly convinced that we are tired, that we’ve earned the right to be unproductive for the first time in 40 years, that our capacity has diminished, that our brain has shrunk, that our synaptic connections have slowed, that work is something to leave behind in favor of ________ (fill the blank with the poison of your choice).
Netflix and its ilk know this better than we do. What’s not to like about a limitless selection of options for vegging for only $8.99/month? Mix in a voice-activated remote and a $1,000 La-Z-Boy and – voila – we are in neuron-shrinking heaven. It’s so easy, convenient, and comfortable, we forget to ask ourselves, as the credits roll: “How useful was this experience? Did it tilt toward useful or balanced or more to trashy? Did I move anybody’s needle, including my own?”
How much feel-good is there after 6 hours of Ozark?
The issue is bigger than Netflix
The issue isn’t Netflix – they are an easy scapegoat. The issue is losing track of, or failing to pursue, a meaningful purpose in what we’ve defined as the retirement years. The issue is failing to combine accumulated work and life skills and experiences with latent/dormant/suppressed talents and dreams to move the needle positively for generations that follow – or for a society that is off the rails.
Am I going to cancel Netflix and be “squeaky clean?” Not a chance – I’m already too deep in my hypocrisies and you are too smart an audience for that to do anything but backfire.
So, I’m going for “balance.” Veg out to something mindless after a productive day – or catching a documentary or series that will feed my passion for learning and teach me something new.
Yes, I’ll probably pig out on Ozark or do Breaking Bad front to back. And I’ll beat myself up for it. I’m not above confirming deep imperfection.
But I will no longer have to keep coming up with an answer to: “What? Why don’t you have Netflix?” I will have joined the “in-crowd” and be able to offer up a cogent argument to the next Longmire fan I encounter (if there is one out there).
What Are We Blind To As We Age?
This recently hit my daily feed of questions that I get from Quora.com:
“What are most people blind to in later life?”
I submitted a quick response that kicked up considerable interest so I decided to share it out this week. Hope you’ll find some value. Let me know either way with a comment or email (gary@makeagingwork.com) – or better yet, a suggestion for other things we are blind to that I didn’t consider.
It would seem to me that at the top of the list of things that people are blind to is the long-term effects of short-term thinking, instant gratification, comfort-seeking, and conformity, especially as it applies to their health and self-worth.
In America, for instance, we’ve earned the dubious distinction of having the longest average span of poor health (10+ years) amongst developed countries and a ranking of only #46 of 193 countries in life expectancy, in-between Cuba and Panama. We manage to do that while having access to the most and the best resources and technology.
We are conditioned from childhood to fit in, to conform, and to follow the rules by the “P’s” in our lives – parents, peers, professors, preachers, politicians, pundits. This conformity track succeeds in tamping down the uniqueness, the inclinations, the core talents that we were gifted with at birth in our pursuit of keeping up with and being like the Joneses.
We get our education, our jobs, and then spend half our lifetime building someone else’s dream for the money and in the pursuit of accumulation and the temporal and extrinsic rather than the intrinsic.
We adopt poor pleasure-seeking lifestyle habits being unaware of the slow, insidious damage that they do. Then we wake up at 55 or 65 with a failing mind or body and a realization that those extrinsic pursuits have consequences and there is limited time to right the ship.
In step with this is a blind eye to the potential dangers of retirement and separation from things that give us purpose. Work is an essential component of longevity. However, we’ve drunk the Kool-Aid for over 50 years that has convinced us that we are entitled to retirement, that separation from work is positive, and that rest, leisure, and winding down is a good thing.
We are naive to how our biology works – mind and body. We are blind to the fact that we either grow or decay and, for a host of wrong reasons, are anxious to begin the decay process and accelerate a process that had an early start due to poor lifestyle choices in the first half or two-thirds of life.
We continue to be blind to the fact that continued growth is possible as we move into our 6th, 7th, 8th, 9th, 10th decades. Later life, for many, becomes a meandering, purposeless, sedentary, comfort-seeking time where learning takes a back seat, the physical decline accelerates, and regrets accumulate.
We are blind to our susceptibility to prevailing attitudes and platitudes regarding the elderly and adopt the platitudes into our own destructive ageist thinking and self-talk. We may have forgotten the power of “self-fulfilling” prophecy and the words we use.
Heard or used these before?
– or laughed at jokes like this?
“At four, success is not needing diapers. At 12, success is having friends. At 17, success is having a driver’s license. At 20, success is having sex. At 35, success is having money. At 50, success is having money. At 60, success is having sex. At 70, success is having a driver’s license. At 75, success is having friends. At 85, success is not needing diapers.”
Most of all, we seem to be blind to the fact that it is never too late to resurrect that innate talent, that uniqueness, that essence that we were gifted with at birth and to deploy it, combining it with accumulated life skills and experiences, to continue to produce in an impactful way instead of just being a self-indulgent consumer.
Retirement, Entropy, and the Fast Track to Frailty
“The greatest part of human life potential has been wasted by people dying before their allotted time was up.” Peter Laslett
I know I must sound like a broken record. But, I’ll say it again: we western-culture humanoids are notoriously naive about our biologies and live too short and die too long. We, with very few exceptions, start life with a birthright of good health and proceed to teach ourselves, with the help of a culture obsessed with instant gratification and a few highly exploitive industries, how to destroy that birthright.
I’ll invoke, once again, the dismal statistics for how that manifests, citing the WHO data which shows us the worst amongst developed countries in our years of poor health. The U.S. is stuck between Cuba and Panama at #46 out of 193 countries in terms of life expectancy – a stat, by the way, that is going backward in the U.S.
Retirement: Solution? Or part of the problem?
I don’t believe I’m a crowd of one thinking that there is a connection between retirement and this dismal display of unhealthy later years? There is little doubt that much of the foundation for this early and extended journey to frailty began decades earlier with our propensity for poor lifestyle decisions in our youth and in our striving, accumulating years. Unfortunately, the retirement mindset that still prevails isn’t generally conducive to slowing, halting, or reversing these first-half damages. Rather, continued entropy by default would seem to be more prevalent than an attempt to use retirement’s extra time and deeper knowledge to get off this track to early frailty.
Taking risks offsets entropy
We persist in hunkering down knowing that it brings on protracted decay and dependency and leads to living short and dying long. I don’t think that’s what we signed on for at birth but we seem to have allowed ourselves to be taught to head in that direction, unaware of the consequences.
Dr. Walter Bortz, author, and retired Stanford University geriatric physician is one of my favorites sources of experienced-based logic and knowledge in this area. In his book “Dare to Be 100”, he states:
Much of that risk-taking means going against conventional wisdom, advice, and cultural norms. Avoiding full-stop retirement is one of those.
How’s your “health space” holding up.
I find it helpful to think about my “health space”, that space between 100% of my health (birth?) and only 30% of my health, below which I’m a short time and a few steps from the crematorium. At 79, I know that I have lots of options to keep my percentage as high in that health space as I possibly can. To do that, I have to “intervene” into the generally expected and accepted lifestyle for someone my age and avoid the “hunker-down/wind-down” that can accelerate my inevitable decline. As the Bortz chart above illustrates, my options are to “intervene” and slow the decline or hunker down and accelerate it.
I’m hearing from some readers who aren’t buying the “hunker down” Kool-aid in their retirement years. Check out the comments at the bottom of last week’s article. My 67- year old friend John is sneaking up on 100 pushups in a minute. Jerry L. is a 74-year-old “gym rat” committed to three intense 2-hour workouts a week. Friend and author of “Retirement Heaven or Retirement Hell” Mike Drak retired once and gave it up and is now on a quest to drop big-time weight and participate in a 2021 Ironman competition.
It’s really just about “guts and smarts,”, especially in our later years.
Here’s some additional Bortzian wisdom to ponder:
Traditional full-stop retirement = entropy = early frailty
It doesn’t make me many friends, but I’ll stand by the above statement. We don’t need to be dying before our allotted time in a country with our resources and knowledge. We can be making more better-informed decisions.
A Gym-rat at 79? There’s Not Much Peer Pressure!!
Harry’s a long-time friend of mine. We’re the same age (79); we shared a few decades of corporate experience with the same company; we helped him and his wife in their search for a home when they made their final relocation to the Denver area around 40 years ago. We’ve broken bread together and shared family challenges openly for many years. I’ve tried in vain to match his skills on the golf course.
It’s been a good relationship – and we expect it to continue. We’ve shared our complaints of aches and pains and creeping debilitations along the way. Harry, in particular, has recently experienced some very frustrating upper and lower back issues. So it was encouraging to get a call from him announcing that he had decided to take advantage of his Medicare Advantage “Silver Sneakers” option that covers the monthly fee at his local 24 Hour Fitness (yes, a few in the area have remained open). He’s now becoming a “regular” in the weight room.
That’s significant because I knew Harry to be a consistent aerobic exerciser but recalcitrant on the weight lifting front. I had suggested to him a few times that he should include some strength training with his exercise. So I saw the announcement as an important breakthrough for him although one would think that 79 is a bit late to start throwing around weights.
There’s this condition we all contract called loss-of-muscle-mass (often tagged with the clinical name “sarcopenia”) that we know a lot about but do little to defend against.
I’ve written on this topic of sarcopenia and the importance of weight training in the past. Here are links to a series on the topic that can elevate your awareness of the condition and the importance of adding strength training to your lifestyle:
Aging Without Frailty – A Series
Aging Without Frailty – A Series (Part 2)
Aging Without Frailty – A Series (Part 3)
Is Harry wasting time and energy hanging with the tattooed, tank-topped, and tiny testicle mirror-muscle crew at 24?
Not in the least. Besides, they won’t even know he’s there – that is unless he comes between them and the mirror.
Harry is taking on one of the most important health-enhancing activities he can take on, even this deep into his eighth decade. I’m putting my money on his back issues improving dramatically as he teams up this weight training with the therapy techniques he’s learned in physical therapy.
It starts in our thirties.
We’ve known like forever that we start losing muscle mass on an accelerating basis starting in our mid-to-late thirties. It really kicks in as we move into our 50s and continues to accelerate unless counteracted. It’s the main reason that people end up in nursing homes.
And the ONLY antidote is strength training. No pills, no magic potions – only putting the muscles up against resistance.
Why do we ignore something this important and avoid the antidote when we know so much about its effectiveness? I have a few thoughts:
It’s one of those healthy, longevity-extending lifestyle choices
But, unfortunately, largely ignored.
Maybe if we knew more about the benefits, we would endure #2-#6 above. Consider this shortlist:
Maybe you can come up with a cogent argument against strength training. If so, please share it.
Mikey likes it!!
I came across this article in my Evernote archives that I want to share with you about 81-year-old Mike Harrington and his venture into strength training.
Exercise Advice from a Powerlifting & Planking 81-Year-Old
I particularly appreciate what he has been able to accomplish in maintaining his core by doing planks. On the advice of an online athletic trainer, I abandoned crunches and sit-ups in favor of planks as my main method for strengthening my core about a year ago.
There’s a video in this article in which Mike does a ten-minute plank. That’s insane. I’ve worked up to a three-minute plank and it is flat out grueling. He got to ten in under a year.
I hope you enjoy his story because he’s a poster boy for what can be done and the benefits therein.
Guaranteed that Harry isn’t doing that – yet! Nor am I – yet! But we both know we could. Most all of us could. But most all of us won’t.
And warehouses for the elderly will continue to be a growth industry.
Do you have a strength training regimen? Leave a comment and tell us about it. Help us learn from what is working for you.
How Not To Waste a Retirement.
“The retirement age is coming down from 70, to 65, to 60 and may, in the course of the next 25 years, go below that.
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 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.
It is finally time to distill wisdom from experience and to give of that wisdom.”
Darn! I wish I’d come up with that last line.
The statement belongs to the late Dr. Mortimer Adler, renowned educator and author. Dr. Adler had been invited onboard the ocean-liner Queen Mary to a luxurious meeting facility filled with the creme-de-la-creme of insurance executives who were gathered for a Million Dollar Roundtable of the National Association of Life Underwriters. Dr. Adler was asked to speak to this illustrious group “to aid in their continuing search for self-development.”
The year was 1962, almost 6 decades ago. Adler turned the tables on the expectations of this group by likening the American retirement dream to digging a premature grave.
I found this story in the excellent book by Mark S. Walton entitled “Boundless Potential: Transform Your Brain, Unleash Your Talents, Reinvent Your Work in Midlife and Beyond.”
Adler’s assertion rings true today. Walton continues Adler’s message: “Find a way to work for the sake of others and you will step up” Adler asserted, “from a lower to a higher grade of life.”
Our pre-occupation with retirement has turned “work” into another unattractive four-letter word for many. For nearly a century now we have re-categorized work into something we tolerate for 35-45 years with the goal to get away from it so we can hopefully do what we really wanted to do 45 years before. That is assuming we knew back then.
But research tells us that we abandon work at our own peril.
A study of 83,000 Americans 65 and older published in Preventing Chronic Disease, a publication of the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention found that being unemployed or retired was associated with the greatest risk of poor health.
Jay Olshansky, a professor at the Chicago’s School of Public Health agrees with the article, saying: “We know that remaining in the labor force is good for us. Not working can lead to overall poorer health.”
Making it the best of four-letter words
In his 1989 best-selling business book “The Age of Unreason”, Charles Handy offered some prescient advice about work and its role in our evolving society. He points out that 50-60 years ago (from 1989) people signed on for work expecting to work 100,000 hours. His formula: 47 hrs/week x 47 weeks/year x 47 years (age 18-65). But now that number is closer to 50,000 hours (37 x 37 x 37) as technology enables companies to do more with fewer bits of our time, as we enter the job force later (avg: 22-24), and with a trend of people retiring earlier.
If we factor in a longevity bonus of 15-30 years that is now becoming more of a reality, I don’t think I’m too far off Handy’s mark by suggesting that we not only risk our health and longevity when we stop working, but we are also robbing society of 50,000 hours of productivity, creativity, and contribution back to mankind.
In Handy’s words:
Some thirty years ago, Handy put a dagger into the heart of the prevailing concept of retirement with his appeal to his readers to consider work the purpose of life. He lists “the three P’s at the heart of life – purpose, pattern, people”. Work provides all three.
Yet, still today, so many can’t wait to abandon work to pursue – – – what? The “what” becomes the rub. For 2 out of 3 retirees, the “what” tends to be shallow and short-term. Garage cleaned and re-organized, golf lessons scheduled, checking off the travel bucket list, alarm clock disabled, pigging out on deferred Netflix series, self-indulgence to the max. One or two years in, those irritating questions surface: “Is this all there is?” “How am I relevant?” “Why am I feeling bored?” “Can I get my old identity back?”
The AgeWave organization confirmed, in their survey of 50,000 retired Baby Boomers that despite 80-90% of pre-retirees being confident they would realize their retirement dreams and goals, only 40% of retirees achieved those happiness and retirement dreams. Vitality, energy, and still-fresh skills are atrophied and productive years wasted.
Active Wisdom
I wrote about the concept of “active wisdom” last year in this article about purpose. It’s a term coined by anthropologist, activist, and writer Mary Catherine Bateson. She calls it a “new stage” where “wisdom is reaped from years of experience and living.” She calls it the “most acceptable and positive trait associated with longevity.”
Purpose brings the “why”. Active wisdom brings the “what.”
If you’re past 40 and can fog a mirror, you’ve got “active wisdom.” Our culture needs it spread around, although it doesn’t give a rip about encouraging you to spread it. It’s more inclined to think of you as a drag on society and prefer that you shuffle off to a warehouse, out of sight, out of the way, out of mind.
Adler had it right:
Let’s empty the warehouses!!
Love to hear from you with your thoughts on all this. Leave us a comment below or drop an email to gary@makeagingwork.com with your feedback. I’m doing these articles weekly, so if you aren’t on our mailing list and would like to receive future articles, join our email list at www.makeagingwork.com.