What’s It Really Like Being 80 Years Old? Surprise, surprise! Nothing changed.

 

Image by annca from Pixabay

Irrelevance comes easy.

Respecting the biology.

How Old Would You Be If You Didn’t Know How Old You Are?

How Come Some Older People Don’t Want To Live That Long?

This is one of those basic existential questions that we all wrestle with at some point in our lives.
Do I want to live long?

It’s easy to understand why one would want life to be over if they are in constant pain, lonely/isolated, and are merely drawing breath, using up oxygen, and taking up space. It has to be a terrible feeling to want your body to give out when it continues to hang in.

I watched helplessly as both my dad and uncle experienced a grueling and extended period of morbidity with smoking-induced emphysema before their bodies finally, and mercifully, gave up.

It was a lonely, fearful existence.

What I do find interesting, however, is why people who are in good health say they don’t want to live that long.

In my mid-sixties, I began to profess that I intended to live to 100 (I’ve since revised that to 112 1/2). Everyone I shared that with was repulsed by the thought and said I was nuts.

That largely remains the case, with some softening, perhaps because of some increased awareness of the possibility – or just simply out of pity.

Despite so much evidence today of people living into their 90s and beyond with high levels of vitality, activity, and positive contribution to society, we still remain fearful of later life.

Two fears.

Research has shown that the two greatest fears as we age are:

  1. Outliving our money
  2. Losing our independence i.e. becoming frail

Simply put, we don’t want to happen to us what we have seen happen to others as they have aged poorly. Plus, we cling to and suffer under strong negative cultural beliefs about aging.

The extensive research that has been done on the lives of centenarians and super-centenarians reveals a different attitude toward aging and the trials that accompany it.

Click this link to an article by neuropsychologist and author Dr. Mario Martinez entitled “How To Live to 100 and Beyond: The 4 Core Traits That All of the World’s Longest Lived People Have in Common”.

Dr. Martinez studied the habits and mindsets of the world’s longest-living people globally. Embedded in his research are clues to what we can all do to live a longer life by simply changing our attitudes, mindsets, and cultural beliefs.

I hadn’t discovered Dr. Martinez when I began professing my goal of living to 100. I had, however, been influenced by the work of semi-retired Stanford geriatric physician, Dr. Walter Bortz, when I read his book “Dare To Be 100”.

His message is simply that there is no biological reason, aside from the very infrequent “blueprint errors” or genetic defects, for any of us not to live to 100 or beyond. He also points to the importance of mindset and habits.

He uses the acronym DARE to represent four keys to reaching 100:

  • D – diet
  • A – attitude
  • R – rejuvenation/renewal
  • E – exercise

Of the four, he emphasizes that “A-attitude” is the most important and the most difficult.

That is consistent with what Dr. Martinez found as he studied centenarians. Their trip to 100 has, at its foundation, a “defiance of disempowering cultural beliefs” that lay so much negative on us about the rigors and struggles of aging.

Dr. Martinez says this about the centenarian mindset:

“Resilience, perseverance, creativity, and flexibility are all attributes I have found in every healthy centenarian I have studied, in cultures spanning five continents.”

So I think it’s safe to say that the antidote to “not wanting to live that long” starts between the temples with an attitude shift and a mindset change that moves us, in Dr. Martinez’s words,

“-from one of passing time to one of engaging space. We need to snap out of our hypnotic concept of time in which things happen to us in sequence, and instead be mindful of how we can happen in our space without assigning a sequence”.

Yes, I expect to continue to be called “nutty or a fool” for my goal of living to 112.5. But I now realize that this reaction is just as described – it’s rooted in a deeply entrenched cultural belief that aging, early senescence, pain, and loneliness are all inextricably linked.

Will I get to 112.5? Chances are pretty slim because the first 50 of my 80 years included some marginal lifestyle habits (smoking, standard American diet, limited exercise) that will reduce my chances. But it’s certain I won’t get there – or even come close – if I don’t set the goal and adopt the mindset of a centenarian.

What if –

– you combine a centenarian mindset with a reason to get up in the morning i.e. a sense of purpose? Do you think your perspective on getting old might change?

Works for me!

Try it, if you haven’t.

Does your mindset line up with that of a centenarian? Have cultural beliefs influenced your attitude toward aging? Does the thought of hitting the century mark resonate or repulse? I’d love to hear your thoughts on the topic. Leave a comment below or drop me an email to gary@makeagingwork.com

Are You Prepared For the Challenges Presented When Both Spouses Retire? Here Are A Few Tips to Consider.

Spousal relationships can be heavily impacted by retirement, especially when both have been working and both decide to retire, regardless of the timing of the respective retirements.

The key to this and to the other elements of retirement that may take place is to start the planning process early, ideally 3–10 years ahead of the planned retirement date, and to COMMUNICATE, COMMUNICATE, COMMUNICATE!

It’s possible that each partner will have different expectations for their retired life together. Some of these expectations can be major and call for serious two-way compromise. Or face the dissolution of a marriage if not addressed.

Divorce of couples over 50 is the highest divorce rate in the U.S.  Most of these divorces are initiated by the woman.

Unfortunately, retirement decisions are not easily dislodged from favoring the male perspective and preferences.

Some examples

  • The husband retires first and has his heart set on a second home on a golf course. The wife retires at the same time or later and wants the second home to be close to the grandchildren. This calls for serious compromise and should be on the table early and not surface as a surprise upon retirement.
  • The wife retires after the husband, and his expectation of her, upon her retirement, is for her to run the household instead of equal sharing of those duties.
  • One spouse may like to travel and the other not. That shouldn’t be a surprise a couple of weeks into the shared retirement. That card should be on that table early and a compromise reached.

An important part of the preparation process is for each partner to know and honor differences in personality, values, personal drivers, and aspirations. This will lead to a retired life that balances time together with time apart to pursue diverse interests.

There should be agreement on what they want to do together and what they wish to pursue separately. The retirement should not end up with a “clingy” partner. Nothing worse than a retired male who expects his wife to be his retirement plaything upon her retirement and failing to honor her desire to have her own life within retirement.

Retirement is full of surprises, usually positive in nature. But there can be many unpleasant surprises, which are unpredictable. But many of the potential pitfalls of retirement can be headed off by spouses getting on the same page about what their retired life is to look like and doing that well in advance of the retirement date(s).

Support that planning with a flexible written plan and revisit it at least twice a year and adjust as appropriate based on the early retirement experiences. It’s best to grow and learn your way into a satisfying and purposeful retirement.

Drifting in and winging it can be disastrous.

I’ve reached back into my archives to pull up a couple of retirement stories that you may find enlightening and helpful. Let us know what has worked for you in your couple’s retirement planning. Click on the pictures below to pull up the articles.

Retirement Planning Done Well.

A Story of Faith, Patience and Grace

Are You Flying a “Freak Flag?” If Not, Give It Some Serious Consideration.

If you’re over 60 and aren’t weird, you need to get there.

No, not that type of weird.

Weird in a “modern elder” way.

Chip Conley of Modern Elder Academy blogs daily at wisdomwell@modernelderacademy.com and rocks my brain at least 2 to 3 times per week with something out on the edge.

He did it again recently when he wrote about flying a “freak flag” as a modern elder.

I hope, dear reader, you remember that those of us of advanced numbers should be thinking as “modern elders.”

Here’s a refresher in case the concept is fuzzy:

Be Part of the “Modern Elder” Movement

Chip supports his freak flag notion with this quote from Michael Meade, author of “Fate and Destiny: The Two Agreements of the Soul.” (Bolding is mine.)

“In old traditions, those who acted as elders were considered to have one foot in daily life and the other foot in the otherworld. Elders acted as a bridge between the visible world and the unseen realms of spirit and soul. A person in touch with the otherworld stands out because something normally invisible can be seen through them…Those who would become truly wise must become weird enough to be in touch with timeless things and abnormal enough to follow the guidance of the unseen. Elders are supposed to be weird, not simply ‘weirdos,’ but strange and unusual in meaningful ways…Elders are supposed to be more in touch with the otherworld, but not out of touch with the struggles in this world. Elders have one foot firmly in the ground of survival and another in the realm of great imagination. This double-minded stance serves to help the living community and even helps the species survive.”

So, if you are getting “weirder” as you age, that should explain it. Or, at least we hope it does, and not something else.

Chip calls it playing in cosmic limbo between here and the hereafter, seeing things the rest of the world can’t.

“It take digesting one’s past to see the future better.”

I’m working on it!

I’m not sure I can fill Meade’s tall order yet. I believe my bride, progeny, and some members of the extended family would attest to a certain level of weirdness in yours truly. Not sure it’s exactly in the vein described above, however.

Given Chip’s cosmic limbo comment, I’m thinking my weirdness needs some cranking up.

Two other comments in Chip’s article provide me motivation for that:

  • Change tends to happen on the edges.
  • If you’re not careful, you’ll turn out ordinary.

Those team up nicely with two reminders I have taped at the top of my laptop keyboard that inspire me on productive days and needle me on bad days:

  • “Be obsessed or be average” – Grant Cardone
  • “You’re either remarkable or invisible” – Seth Godin

I’m finding that the degree of average is directly proportional to the degree of obsession.

Are you “obsessed” with what you want the second half of your life to look like? to be? to accomplish?

Or settling for average?

Are you “invisible” and silently carrying a lifetime of meaningful skills, experiences, and stories?

Or are you willing to fly your “freak” flag and share your wisdom?

 

Chip concludes with this encouragement:

“Of course, our challenge is not to be weird for the sake of being weird; it’s about the freedom and power of being wired differently (which makes you that good kind of weird). A valuable elder is a conduit. Like an electrical adapter in a foreign country, the elder knows how to translate and transmute a current (or power source) so that it’s available to the rest of us.

So, let your freak flag fly, modern elder—let your wired wisdom become a hot channel for those attracted to your electrical charge.

We need your weird energy more than ever.”

How ’bout it modern elders?

Let’s get weird together.

Let’s test the edges with the youngers. They’re listening.

Let’s fly a freak flag.

Flying a freak flag already?  What’s it look like? Tell us about it with a comment below.

What If We Had Never Invented Retirement? Would Our Culture Be Better Off? Three Suggestions That Say “Yes.”

You do know that retirement is invented and not natural, right?

We appear to be the only species that decides to voluntarily push ourselves toward a state of accelerating physical and mental decline and deterioration.

As opposed to the natural world, where it’s involuntary and usually abrupt – as in dead.

The silver maple in my backyard is showing signs of giving it up, ravaged by 10 years of persistent Colorado drought conditions. Some spring soon I expect the leaves won’t appear and it will be over and leave a gargantuan removal task.

I know the mother red fox that frequently sits underneath it will keep hunting, digging, delivering kits, and surviving until she can’t and something – or someone – takes her out.

Non-existent 150 years ago.

Retirement didn’t exist anywhere on the planet 150 years ago.

My maternal grandparents homesteaded on a quarter section of free government land in rural Wyoming around 1905. No water within a half-mile, no wood to build a house, lived in a covered dugout for a year while they dug a well and poured a concrete house.

Homestead house – still standing 100 years later.

No indoor plumbing until 1958, my sophomore year in high school. Reports of two-holers with Montgomery Ward catalogs are not a myth, trust me.

They scratched a subsistence-level existence off this hard-scrabble parcel and worked themselves to death, giving it up in their early sixties after spawning four children, three of which made it past 16.

The idea of retirement didn’t exist in their world. It was work, survival, and family to the end. And family made the final transition loving and comfortable.

They hadn’t heard about Otto von Bismarck’s plan.

Back in 1889, German Chancellor Otto von Bismarck invented the idea of retirement, claiming that: “Those who are disabled from work by age and invalidity have a well-grounded claim to care from the state.” It sounds very altruistic; however, the truth is, he was buying back votes in that cohort that he was beginning to lose to the  Marxist movement.

Humanitarian? Or political? You decide.

Otto gets the blame or the credit for the concept of human retirement, depending on your mindset.

FDR went to school on ‘ol Otto and gave the concept a big boost in 1935 as he teamed up with big businesses and unions (maybe the only time that has happened). Together they carved out a political solution to the problem of unemployed young men rioting in the streets by establishing an arbitrary retirement age of 65 to move older workers out and younger workers in.

Made some sense since few people lived that long (average lifespan at 62). The prospect of getting “have fun, beach or bingo” money for 2-3 years made sense.

So the origin of this thing that still pervades our psyche so deeply 87 years later is both unnatural and politically inspired.

And an incredible bonanza for creative insurance salespeople who have profited mightily by convincing us that a no-work life filled with leisure is the healthiest option for the later stages of life.

Is the fact that our average life expectancy has been receding over the last 5 years and that we experience, on average, 12 years of ill health in the U.S. before we die evidence that a retirement lifestyle may not be the healthiest?

Agreed – those conditions are more likely a throwback to earlier lifestyle decisions, but it’s hard to argue that a full-stop retirement does anything to slow or reverse them.

What if it didn’t exist?

Pretty hard to imagine, isn’t it. At least here in the U.S. – and in many western cultures.

But, there are cultures where retirement doesn’t exist – at least, not in the off-the-cliff, labor-to-leisure form that has characterized most retirements in the U.S. over the last 50 years.  And, surprisingly, these cultures present a counterargument to the western logic that drives our infatuation with a concept claiming that a no-work retirement is a healthy lifestyle option.

You may be familiar with the research done by Dan Buettner of National Geographic that culminated in the book “Blue Zones: Lessons for Living Longer From the People Who Lived the Longest.”  Buettner and his crew of demographers identified five locations where people lived the longest and healthiest lives anywhere on the planet.

You can go here to see the nine commonalities that led to longer, happier, healthier lives in these communities.  You’ll notice that retirement isn’t included. In fact, Buettner reports:

“In Okinawa, there isn’t even a word for retirement. Instead there’s simply ‘ikigai,’ which essentially means ‘the reason for which you wake up in the morning.'”

OK, I’m all in on escaping a grinding, meaningless, purposeless, stress-filled job. It makes little sense to continue that for 30-40 years in pursuit of an idea that offers up false promises and is a trojan horse for a deteriorating healthspan.

What if we started over and acknowledged that putting an arbitrary use-by time stamp on people for the third-third of their life promotes a terrible waste of talent, knowledge, and wisdom (a.k.a crystallized intelligence – see this article).

You’re Over 50. Heads Up – Your Intelligence Is Crystallizing. (if your lucky!)

Here are three things that I think might happen if we stopped sending that talent, knowledge, and wisdom to the La-Z-Boy, park bench, or CCRC (Continuing Care Retirement Community).

1. We could redeploy that talent and wisdom to solve more of the mounting world’s problems. As author Neil Pasricha states: “There are far more problems and opportunities on this spinning planet than there are people to help with them so if you feel lost, follow your heart, find your ikigai, and remember the 4 S’s.

Social: Friends, peers, and coworkers who brighten our days and fulfill our social needs.

Structure: The alarm clock ringing because you have a reason to get up in the morning (ikigai), and the resulting satisfaction you get from earned time off.

Stimulation: Keeping our minds challenged by learning something new each day.

Story: Being part of something bigger than ourselves by joining a group whose high-level purpose is something you couldn’t accomplish on your own.
And stop worrying that you won’t ever be able to retire. You’ll be far better off if you don’t.

2. Reduce the burden on our out-of-control healthcare system.  People age 55 and over accounted for 56% of total health spending in 2019, despite making up only 30% of the population. Active engagement, continuing to create, and reversing the role from sedentary self-indulgent retirees to active selfless contributors will mean a healthier, more vibrant elderly population with less extended morbidity and early frailty.

3. Return to generativity. We would reduce stagnation and inject more generativity which is “the propensity and willingness to engage in acts that promote the wellbeing of younger generations as a way of ensuring the long-term survival of the species.” Full-stop retirement steers us away from the level of generativity that volunteering, mentoring, engaging in community activism, and fostering other people’s growth can bring. Dr. Ken Dychtwald in his book “What Retirees Want” points out that individual Americans 65+ have  7.4 hours of leisure time per day equalling 195 billion hours of leisure a year or about 3.9 trillion hours over the next 20 years. He also points out that, despite that, older Americans spend under 4% of their discretionary time as volunteers, perhaps giving in to the lure of comfort, leisure, and reduced engagement.

I suspect this may not be a very popular position. Please share your thoughts.  If you have any ideas on what we could do, or what would happen if we pivoted our perspectives on how to live out our third age, please share them with a comment below or an email to gary@makeagingwork.com.

Retirement: Blessing or a curse? The jury has returned. But it’s still hung.

Image by Gerd Altmann from Pixabay

Imagine it’s your first-time meeting with a certified financial planner, a financial services veteran with a string of acronyms after his/her name.

Imagine the conversation going like this:

“Welcome, so glad to meet you. I’ve been looking forward to having this conversation with you. It’s a great day for me when I can help another couple hop on the trail of false expectations and backward logic. So, let’s talk about your retirement goals.”

OK, that conversation won’t happen. He/she didn’t get that plush office and wall full of certification plaques by telling the whole story.

But, maybe it should happen because that type of conversation would come closer to reality than most of the conversations that go on in those financial planner offices.

Retirement Kool-Aid

We’ve been buying into retirement as a blessing ever since clever insurance salespeople determined that the idea of escaping from work into a world of freedom and relaxation with a healthy allowance for fun is a pretty easy sell. Especially when you can package it up with the government’s authorization of instruments like IRAs and 401ks as pensions fade away.

So, we’ve been drinking the full-stop retirement Kool-Aid for about five decades – to the point that the concept has become a pseudo-entitlement that is virtually unassailable.

I’ve shortened and put the dagger into the heart of more than one lagging dinner conversation amongst my age cohort by suggesting that retirement is an unnatural and illogical act with many hidden downsides.

They will agree, however, that their financial planner (if they have been smart enough to have one) has not revealed some of the hidden downsides of full-stop retirement, such as:

  • 5-16% increase in difficulties associated with mobility and daily activities.
  • 5-6% increase in illness conditions.
  • 6-9% decline in mental health.

Or, that:

  • 20% of Americans 65 and older suffer from moderate to high levels of depression.
  • Men over 65 take their own lives at double the overall suicide rates and men age 75 and older have the highest suicide rate of any age group.

Nor will they share the backward logic of the full-stop retirement concept:

  • Retirement didn’t exist anywhere on the planet 150 years ago, doesn’t occur in nature, doesn’t exist in cultures with the highest average lifespans, and is built around a concept that, by definition, means to “go backward.”
  • A lifestyle built on leisure leads to decay and goes against our basic biology/physiology.
  • Work has been determined to be a key component of healthy longevity.

Despite all this, a surprising percentage of boomers and early GenXers continue to buy the 20th- century linear-life model of 20 years of learn, 40 years of earn, and 20 years of retire/relax.

An important missing part in these conversations is that it is very difficult to save enough in those 40 years to support 20 years of doing nothing, not to mention that the stress and bad lifestyle habits that occur during that “bust the hump” period don’t bode well for that final 20 being a healthy period.

The average retirement savings by age, according to 2019-2020 Federal Reserve SCF data isn’t very pretty:

  • 18-24: $4,745.25
  • 25-29: $9,408.51
  • 30-34: $21,731.92
  • 35-39: $48,710.27
  • 40-44: $101,899.22
  • 45-49: $148,950.14
  • 50-54: $146,068.38
  • 55-59: $223,493.56
  • 60-64: $221,451.67
  • 65-69: $206,819.35

Fewer people are going to get to the numbers the financial planner’s charts and graphs say is necessary to sustain a healthy retirement.

And, speaking of health – – –

It’s an unfortunate fact that, in the U.S., the average time spent in ill health for our elderly is the highest for all developed countries at 12.5 years, a really big chunk of that coveted 20. Do you suppose part of that comes from the stress of trying to meet false expectations?

The retirement planning disconnect

Dr. Ken Dychtwald and his Age Wave organization teamed in 2019 to explore people’s hopes, dreams, and concerns in retirement. Together with The Harris Poll, they conducted a groundbreaking study of more than 9,000 people across North America to understand more deeply what it means to live well in retirement.

The report, entitled “Longevity and the New Journey of Retirement” is a very comprehensive report that is a worthy read.

There are numerous takeaways from the report. I want to emphasize one in particular: the attitude toward preparedness for retirement and the lack therein.

The chart from the report pretty well says it all:

Financial planners are not equipped or interested in addressing three of these four gaps.

Blessing or a curse?

So the jury that is this report tells us that retirement is a curse for over 30% of retirees and a near-curse for another 20%.

We can do better with this third-third of our lives by recognizing the four pillars above and planning ahead for them.

Growing old or getting old? They’re two different things and you have a choice.

We are all going to grow old – that is inevitable and immutable.

Life is a fatal disease. Once contracted, there is no known cure.

Time marches on.

Getting old, on the other hand, is optional.

That’s between the temples. How we grow old is largely up to us and starts with attitude.

I’ll bet you know a 50-year-old that’s going on 80. And an 80-year-old going on 50.

The difference?

Sorry, you’re wrong if you said genetics. Genetics may determine 20–30% of our longevity at most. Attitude can affect longevity and determines 100% of how we view aging.

Recent research has revealed that people who have a positive attitude about aging live an average of 7 years longer than those who don’t.

We westerners have a fixation on numbers, especially in the U.S. where we seem unwilling/unable to release the number 65 from our thinking as a turning point to the downside slope of our lives.

We couple that with the non-sensical concept of retirement and accelerate the growing old and then die short of our biology’s true longevity potential.

We know there is no biological reason that any of us shouldn’t live to 100 or beyond. But we continue to pull up severely short of that benchmark.

In my experience, the mere mention of living that long amongst my age cohort (80) invites plenty of scorn and invective. Most are repulsed by the idea, failing to acknowledge that we’re designed to last at least that long. We should if we viewed our later years differently and dispensed with the cultural influences that help us accelerate the decline that most people experience in the second half of life.

My 80-year-old body, while in much better shape than even most 60-year-olds, still confirms that the immutable is moving forward. I am growing old and will, just like you, eventually die.

But I’m choosing not to get old despite the external evidence that it is happening, albeit at a slower accelerating pace than for most of my cohort.

I’m striving to give my body and mind what they need to come as close as possible to the 122-year benchmark for longevity set for us by a lady in Paris, France in 1997.

I don’t expect to get there because there is likely too much early life (pre-40) damage done to overcome to make that happen. But, I expect to come closer than most by setting a 100+ year goal than if I just chose to accept average.

I’m already ahead since I just turned 80 and the average lifespan for an American male is around 75 (and declining).

Two things that will help me get closer to that benchmark:

  1. Gratitude: as crazy as it sounds, I’m grateful that I will die because it means I lived when many are never given the chance. I have the gift of life.
  2. I stopped time-traveling into the past and the future and accept that I only have today. One of my antidotes to growing old is to attitudinally live in the present moment and avoid the worry, regrets, and fears that lie in the past and future.

I have no illusions about the fact that it could all be over tomorrow.

Right now, I have this moment.

What is better – having a job or being retired? Let’s think this through.

I’ll apologize in advance for what is a pretty esoteric answer.

I suggest that neither is a good option.

Job

What is a “job?” Some have defined it as “jackass of the boss”, a rather brash definition but, unfortunately, one that applies for many.

A job is a relatable term for most as it’s what we do every day to produce income, the fuel that keeps us on the daily racecourse. The dictionary defines job as “a lump, chore or duty.”

For some, that lump is a “lump of coal.”

Jobs became the thing with the industrial revolution as industry carved things up into chores or duties all focused collectively on enabling the achievement of the company goals.

Fundamentally, we began to sell our time to build someone else’s dream.

Consider that the average job is around 3.2 years and that during the average lifespan, most of us will have had a dozen or more “jobs.”

Career

With a step up the work chain, we find “career” which is a word, interestingly, that has its origin in the Latin word “carrus” or “wheeled vehicle” denoting a “cart” and then later from the French word “carrier” denoting a road or racecourse.

The dictionary defines career, as a verb, to mean “move swiftly and in an uncontrolled way in a specified direction.”

Careers for many are just that – a mad rush for a long time that ends up going nowhere with that disappointment coming late in life. Or maybe it’s going somewhere in terms of provision and accumulation, but not in a way that fits the definition of a “calling”.

The checkered flag at the end of this racecourse is that coveted pot of gold called retirement, a finish line the desire for which may have impeded the pursuit of a true calling.

Vocation

Which leads, then, to the concept of vocation. Vocation is rooted in the Latin vocāre, meaning to call, which suggests listening for something that calls out to you, a voice telling you what you are.

Today, we’ve convoluted the true meaning of the word and relate vocation to specialized training into a “career track” or a “job” via a vocational or trade school. Not likely the pursuit of a “higher calling” but more a decision based on need and what may be trending in the “job” market.

GRAMMARIST | English grammar, usage, and style blog defines a vocation as:

“a calling, an occupation, or a large undertaking for which one is especially suited. It can be roughly synonymous with career or profession, though vocation connotes a seriousness or a commitment that these words don’t always bear.”

Currently, we tend to mix vocation in with two other words – career and job – when their distinctions are quite different.

I’m basing this strange answer on a simple observation – one that I made about four decades ago that still holds true.

Highly successful people, world changers, and deep influencers don’t have jobs or careers and they don’t retire.

They have a vocation. They have discovered and are answering a calling. They are honoring their “uniqueability.” They don’t leave the creative process. They tend to “work themselves to death.”

And-

-they live longer than most.

Work – another bad four-letter word.

Retirement is based on a French verb meaning “retreat, go backward.”

We’ve bought into this unnatural, longevity-sapping act which has created an either/or mindset. Work is something to get away from. We either work or we retire – not both.

The possibility of avoiding a “lump of coal” or job and pursuing a life of leisure has a much stronger appeal than considering the possibility of a lifetime of answering a calling and pursuing it to the end.

We all have a “vocation” in us. But it gets covered over, pushed back as we pursue the 20th-century linear life model of learn-earn-relax/retire-die.

Within that model, we will pursue that paycheck at the expense of our calling to achieve an act that has been shown to shorten our lives and create a drain on our society.

We’re waking up.

The no-work, leisure-based retirement model is dying, none too soon. The emerging model rejects either/or and thinks both/and with the emergence of a lifestyle model built around “semi-retirement for a lifetime.”

It’s built around the simple discovery that busting your hump for 40+ years to accumulate enough to do nothing for another 20 years is a failed model. It is nearly impossible to accumulate enough savings over a 40-year work life to support a totally no-work lifestyle for another 20–30 years.

Millennials, GenXers, and even Boomers, are adopting a semi-retired lifestyle built around work following their calling and designed to support a balance of work, leisure, and learning for a lifetime.

Most Americans of Retirement Age Are Not Ready to Retire. That Could Be a Good Thing!

 

Forgive me for cheating a bit this week. I’m sharing a recent post I put out on Quora recently that kicked up some fuss. You’ve read much of this before, but, as it’s said, repetition is the mother of learning. So, it’s that thought, along with this –

-that has me short-cutting this week. Thumb repair and keyboards make for a painful experience.

Thanks for indulging me.

Help me understand something:

  1. What is a “retirement age?”
  2. Who determines it?
  3. How is it determined?
  4. Does it exist everywhere?
  5. Is it the same for everybody?
  6. WHY DOES IT EVEN EXIST?

Do we stop and think this through?

We get all wrapped around the axel over a concept that:

  1. Is an unnatural act that doesn’t exist in nature.
  2. Didn’t exist anywhere on the planet 150 years ago.
  3. Doesn’t exist in many cultures, many of which also have much longer healthspans and average lifespans than countries enamored by retirement.
  4. Was conceived for political and not humanitarian purposes.
  5. Establishes an arbitrary and artificial finish line based on political decisions made 86 years ago.
  6. Was creatively exploited and packaged up by insurance salespeople to create a multibillion-dollar financial services industry in which it’s only about the numbers.
  7. Promotes a mindset that says work is to be avoided and often establishes lifestyle habits that are contrary to the grow-or-die nature of our biology and physiology.
  8. Has become a deeply entrenched pseudo-entitlement with little basis for existence that has become so deeply entrenched in the western psyche as to be virtually unassailable.

I’m one of a still small but growing group of “retirement-aged” people who question the sensibility of retirement as we’ve had it drilled into us for the last 50+ years.

Perhaps you could tell from the above.

I came to that conclusion about 40 years ago –

-as I observed that many of the most successful world-changers were living longer and didn’t disengage from the creative process i.e. they didn’t retire.

Today, in the U.S., we still cling to the number 65 as that coveted retirement age although it was a number established 86 years ago by FDR and his union and business cronies to get older people out of the workforce to make room for rioting younger workers during the great depression.

The average lifespan at the time was 62, reinforcing the fact that it was not a humanitarian move.

Mysteriously, with the help of a powerful financial services industry, we still see that number as the top of the productivity hill and the start of – – – –

-well that’s where it gets interesting.

The roadmaps past 65 are limited. And the financial services folks aren’t trained, qualified, or interested in providing anything other than a financial roadmap – and one that is unrealistic and unachievable for most.

Check out these recent numbers from a retirement study from the Transamerica Center:

Total household retirement savings among all workers is $93,000 (estimated median). Baby Boomer workers have the most retirement savings at $202,000, compared with Generation X ($107,000), Millennials ($68,000), and Generation Z ($26,000) (estimated medians).

So you are a boomer with $200k in the bank and a financial advisor saying you need 5x that to sustain a “pleasurable” retirement. And, if you can’t get there, it’s because you aren’t disciplined enough or working hard enough.

Certainly, they say, the charts and graphs can’t be the problem – YOU are the problem. But, still, 1-2 % of that $200K lines their coffers each year while you get your act together.

Not a bad gig if you can get it and spread it across enough sheep.

An alternate plan with mental, physical, psychological, and spiritual considerations are not part of their program or expertise.

That didn’t matter much if you only lived 3–5 years beyond 65. Beach, bingo, bridge, and bocce ball made sense then. Not today, with 20–30 years of potential productive runway left.

It is unrealistic, in today’s world, to expect very many to reach the saving goals that retirement professionals say are required to sustain a 20–30 year non-income-producing life.

For one, fewer people can save much, if any. For another, most start too late with no chance of catching up to these large numbers.

So, we are on our own negotiating the aftermath of the questionable decision to exit the production mode and enter the leisure mode. It’s understandable that there is more angst today than ever amongst the U.S. population (where I am) about being able to reach the financial numbers that will support an extended non-work retirement life.

Perhaps we should start by accepting the reality that it’s near impossible to expect 40 years of “bust-your-hump” savings to finance 20-30 years of doing mostly nothing.

Comfort, convenience, and conformity.

As Americans, we are notoriously poor savers. We link that with short-term thinking linked to a cultural-driven tendency to seek comfort, convenience, and to conform to those around us.

Add to that the fact that most of us still cling to the 20th-century linear life model of 20 years of learn, 40 years of earn, and 20 years of relax and die.

Your financial adviser isn’t likely to inform you that the chances are better than 50% that 10 of those last 20 years are going to be in poor health and not very enjoyable because of the habits developed during the 40 years of busting the hump to earn, reach their unrealistic saving numbers, and enable a lifestyle that may take you out early.

How many other 86-year old concepts do you still have operating in your life?

We’re seeing a gradual, long-past-due transition away from the traditional retirement model with its onerous savings requirements.

The gradual demise of learn-earn-relax-die is giving way to a model that supports continued working past the normal retirement age. And it’s not just the money that is motivating this movement. There is a growing understanding that having some form of purposeful work – for pay or not for pay – in the latter third of life is a key to healthier longevity.

A balance of a purposeful life mixed with leisure and continued learning is an emerging post-career lifestyle model.

The concept of semi-retirement is growing rapidly, not only amongst those of retirement age but also amongst millennials and GenXers who don’t buy into the linear life model.

Some are semi-retiring in their 30s and 40s into a lifestyle doing what they enjoy and are good at and doing it on their terms with the expectation of doing it well past the normal retirement age.

It works for those well past the artificial finish line, like yours truly.

Think about trying it – you might like it, especially the relief from the aforementioned financial planner guilt trip.

Here’s an article that provides a perspective on this concept:

Exactly What It Means To Be Semi-Retired

Does all this resonate? What are your thoughts, pro or con? Love to have your feedback on this topic. Leave a comment here or email me your thoughts at gary@makeagingwork.com. New articles each week on retirement, aging, or health and wellness at www.makeagingwork.com

Aging: When You Have More to Give and Less to Lose.

Dear reader, if you’ve been hanging with me for a while, you know I’m in total denial.

Yep, still deluding myself into thinking that living to 112 1/2 years makes sense.

As my chronology has moved into my 9th decade, some of my physiology doesn’t seem to have signed on for the trip. Or, at least it’s hinting that it’s gonna be a tough trip.

As you read this, I’m sitting in a recliner coming down from a Bier Block anesthesia of my left arm so a hand surgeon could remove the joint at the base of my thumb and somehow jury rig it so that in 12 weeks I can start playing guitar again and in 4 months grip a golf club again.

You can tell I’m thrilled.

Apparently, it’s a common procedure for my age cohort. Things do wear out.

Ever try functioning with only one thumb?  Some things won’t be going that well for the next few months.

The thumb isn’t alone!

In the meantime, some other parts are sending off signals that they may not be signing on for the cruise to super-centenarianism.

Left shoulder, left hip, left foot, left wrist. Don’t ask me to explain – maybe it’s because I voted for Trump (regretfully).

Regardless, the last couple of months have, more than any other time, reminded me that being an older person trying to impersonate a younger person isn’t fooling anybody, least of all my body parts.

Oh, I’m not abandoning denial. I find a strange comfort there. I’ll keep thinking about staying young and not growing old. And I’ll keep the repair thing going until the universe decides it’s time to take all those well-worn and recycled parts back.

Part of the fuel for the denial is the perhaps delusional feeling that what I do – and intend to do until the universe makes that call – brings value to somebody, somewhere, somehow.

Taking the sting out of old age.

Eric Weiner is an author and self-described “Philosophical Traveler and Recovering Malcontent” who writes on Medium.com. A few things in one of his recent posts (see it here) made me stop and think. For one:

“Old age is not a disease. It is not a pathology. It is not abnormal. It is not a problem. Old age is a continuum, and everyone is on it. We’re all aging all the time. You are aging right now as you read these words — and not any faster or slower than an infant or a grandfather.

As our future shrinks, other futures grow. Our unfinished business will be finished by others. This thought, perhaps more than any other, takes the sting out of old age.”

People like Mr. Weiner, with their apparent intellect and deep, critical thinking, tend to send me hurtling into that nomadic desert wandering in circles in what is my ADHD-infested mind.

I found myself thinking of how little what I do means much, in the general scope of eternity and life on this mudball.

That kinda stings.

Until I thought about what Weiner says about unfinished business being finished by others. As my future shrinks, other futures grow – and my business may be carried forward by others.

That sets a new bar for me.

Get on it, bucko – and stop wasting time!! Somebody will pick up the pieces. Just go break some things.

Somehow, I tied his thought to retirement (see desert reference above).

Surprise, surprise! Since I seem to have this thing about what this unnatural, illogical concept has become in our lives.

It struck me how so many traditional retirees end up in a swamp made up of boredom, irrelevance, isolation, and declining health. It occurred to me that retirement does become sort of the “ultimate casualty” for many as they stop the business of doing business that can be finished by others.

Doesn’t full-stop retirement stop that train of building on something bigger than oneself? Something that can be carried on?

Doesn’t self-indulgent consumerism keep us from having a chance to fulfill why we are placed on this planet?

I’m reminded of a speech that distinguished educator and author Dr. Mortimer Adler delivered to an insurance Million Dollar Roundtable of the National Association of Underwriters on the Queen Mary in 1962 (bolding is mine):

“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.”

The protagonist in Weiner’s article is a French woman, Simone de Beauvoir, the French novelist, philosopher, and feminist hero. She once said:

“There is only one solution if old age is not to be an absurd parody of our former life and that is to go on pursuing ends that give our existence meaning — devotion to individuals, to groups or to causes, social, political, intellectual or creative work.”

Let’s trade in the 20th-century relic that we’ve succumbed to –

Learn – Earn – Retire – Die

for –

Learn – Earn – Return

Any thoughts on this? We’d love your feedback. Drop us an email at gary@makeagingwork.com or leave a comment below.