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This post marks the beginning of Year 6 of The EndGame.
Yes, difficult though it may be to imagine, I’ve been posting weekly (with brief lapses) about Aging for five whole years!
No one is more amazed than I am. Amazed that I have stuck with it, week after week, for this long. (In a career marked by many job changes and pivots, five years approaches a personal record for tenacity.) Amazed that hundreds of subscribers read these posts and dozens respond and comment every week. Amazed that I still find new and interesting things to write about.
My objective when I began was to write about all aspects of aging with an emphasis on finding the positives. The negatives, I feel, are already well-documented.
Over five years, I’ve written about aging in place and senior living communities, Depression and resilience, Retirement and semi-retirement, Grief and hope, identity and identity theft, Mental Health and physical Therapy, loneliness and social connection, tech innovations and tech shortcomings, Health insurance and the health care system, brain science and dementia. Other topics included higher Education for adults, feeling invisible, fighting ageism, and avoiding scams.
Several weeks ago, when I mentioned to someone that I had been writing about aging for five years, they asked, “What have you learned?”
The question stumped me. I have certainly learned plenty (as, hopefully, have you), but how could I sum it all up in a coherent way?
After several weeks of pondering, here is my first attempt at answering her question. Here is what I have learned.
1. Aging is not a bowl of cherries.
It comes with inevitable losses – of friends, of loved ones, of memory, of bodily functions. It comes with doubts about whether we serve a purpose any longer – doubts fed by a youth-worshipping culture that is eager to declare us obsolescent. It comes with unwelcome thoughts about regrets and might-have-beens, and often-difficult thoughts about mortality and Legacy.
2. But aging is not all pain and loss. And it beats the alternative.
Medical advances, along with the advantages of living in affluent societies, have gifted us with longer lives. Once we reach 60 years of age, we have an even chance to live into our 90s. This is unprecedented, and it is up to us to use these gift years to our benefit.
3. You need a reason to get out of bed – something or someone to live for.
We take for granted all the structure that working for an organization provides. We’re assigned tasks. We work toward established goals. We’re invited to meetings. We chat with colleagues. You only notice the structure when it disappears from your life – at retirement – and you wake up in the morning with nowhere to go, no one to see, nothing to do. Once you’re done celebrating your liberation – the typical honeymoon is about six months – you come to realize that you need to replace the organization’s structure with one of your own.
Some call that capital P Purpose. But even a little p purpose will do – a fix-it project at home or chauffeuring the grandchildren. And it’s up to you to find it.
4. The American “healthcare system” is an unspeakable mess.
This is not to slam physicians, nurses, researchers, and others who dedicate their lives to helping people achieve better health. It is to say that the “system”
in which they must operate is hopelessly complex, needlessly expensive, and delivering less than optimal outcomes for patients. It’s not impossible to do better: Other countries have created systems that guarantee access for all citizens at considerably less cost. But our jerry-rigged mishmash of highly trained professionals, privately and publicly supported research, state and federal regulation, a private insurance industry, a private pharmaceutical industry, and for-profit and nonprofit institutions manages to create high incentives for profit and less compelling incentives for excellent patient care. And no group spends more Money on health care, and suffers more harm from its failures, than older Americans.
5. Retirement was an interesting idea whose time has passed.
Longer lives are a mixed blessing. While we can be grateful for more years of living, it’s hard to feed and house yourself on no income. The original concept of retirement was a short span of leisure at the end of a career. When fewer people lived long enough to retire, and retirement typically lasted 5-15 years, the math worked. When the period after working is 25 to 35 years, only the wealthiest 10% can afford it.
6. The AfterWork (my term for the state formerly known as “retirement”) is a new stage of life.
The old configuration for a normal life was roughly 20 years of education, 40 years of work and Family, 5-15 years of retirement and failing health, and death. Today the configuration looks more like 20 of education, 40 of work and family, and 20-30 years of The AfterWork preceding the Afterlife. The AfterWork is our Longevity bonus, too lengthy to spend entirely in leisure but long enough to build a second career or pursue a personal passion. We can use these years to solidify personal Relationships with friends and family, or for that matter, to seek enlightenment – whatever brings us satisfaction.
7. Perspective lengthens with age.
With six decades of living behind you, your thoughts and concerns change. Short-term ambitions in the present moment take a back seat to seeing life as a sweeping panorama encompassing past and future. You’re slower to judge, more accepting of what is. Less inclined to fight, more eager to find resolution.
Some even call it Wisdom.
8. No one’s journey is identical.
They say when you’ve met one old person, you’ve met one old person. As we have aged, our lives have taken different paths, so that we are actually more different from one another than when we started our lives. And that means sweeping generalizations about older adults are nearly always untrue. Be wary of them.
Now, it’s your turn.
What have you learned in your years on the planet? Do the things I’ve learned fit your own experience? What aspects of aging have I left out? I’m curious to know. Feel free to share your thoughts in the comments.
