Excerpt from Daily Cures, Wisdom for Healthy Aging by Connie Mason Michaelis
Jo Ann Jenkins, CEO of AARP, writes in her book Disrupt Aging, “We added more years to average life expectancy in the last century than in all previous history combined…for the first time in history long life isn’t a rarity. Over half of the people born today will live to be 100.” If you are relatively healthy at 65 today, odds are you will live another 22 years! We need a new model for the stages of our lives. In 1900 most people endured lives of manual labor; there was no need to worry about the second half. If you were lucky enough to survive 40 years of hard work, you were quite happy to spend the rest of your life doing nothing. When life expectancy was 50, a rocking chair was a good idea! In our era, when most work is mental work, people are not finished after 40 years on the job. We face some very productive years that can become our finest chapters.
How do we address these extended stages of life? The Pew Research Center found that 77% of workers expect to work at least part-time for money after retirement. If you believe that aging equals freedom, then opportunities abound. Andrea Huff, in her book Every Night’s Friday Night, says, “My premise is that time is the new money, and it’s equally important to spend it well. Just as it’s critical to invest your money in diversified ways, it’s also critical to find a combination of activities to provide meaning, stretch your thinking, force you to learn new things…and develop your inner life.” Do you spend more time worrying about the money left or the time left? Is your bucket list full of creative ideas to continue your personal growth, to be a valuable contributor to our world, and leave the legacy of your choice? You have a couple of buckets to be concerned with, the bucket of money and the bucket of time---spend wisely!
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