Inspirational:
Ok, I admit, morning is not a time to provoke me. Here are a couple of items to ponder as I did early this morning. It all began with my Facebook feed, where I stumbled upon the following article from the Guardian: https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2016/nov/25/over-50s-new-career-teacher?CMP=fb
In the Guardian article, I read the following and could immediately feel the hair on the back of my neck stand up. Of course, I’m particularly sensitive here, being that I’m in the target age group. There are times, sometimes frequently these days where I find myself wondering about the composition, competency and lens of editorial boards – just saying………. I’ll leave the rest of the wondering to you.
“Just ask the newly retired, moping around the house with nothing much to do; or formerly stay-at-home mothers whose children are flying the nest; or indeed anyone out of work and desperately looking for it. If you’re not needed by somebody for something, even if only to cut up their fish fingers or find their lost PE kit, then it’s hard to know quite where you fit or why you matter.” The Guardian I had to resist the temptation to run into the bathroom and stare into the mirror……..
Last night we were all sitting around enjoying a quiet evening and watching tv, such as it was. After about the 15th commercial on Medicare options, some of which I sensed held a tinge of downright threatening-dom for anyone who couldn’t filter properly – like you were going to fall into the abyss if you missed the sign-up deadline for supplemental benefits by December 7, I decided to remove myself from the room.
Briefly, the Guardian article posits the idea of the “possibility of considering” a new career in your 50s – like this should be some sort of anomaly in the thought process of the 50-somethings. But, is it exactly just that, an anomaly? Behind this premise is the terrible assumption that you are basically all washed up by now, stuck in some downslope on the curve, deteriorated of brain and body and of all willpower, new ideas, motivation and usefulness in your career and family life and thus about to be spit out onto the bare pavement by the big machine that are the generally-accepted fountains of structure and social wherewithal and boundaries of purposefulness.
It’s no surprise to those around me that I find this one of the most frustrating and destructive of perspectives in sociological thought and so-called prowess affecting us today. And, even though I understand that it is advantageous to project this set of ideas out from certain corporate money and governmental leadership machines for their own benefit, I truly don’t understand why anyone would either readily or by osmosis allow it to assimilate into one’s psyche. But perhaps without the proper firewall, it could or would.
If you’d believe the tv ads or other media screaming at you, by this time we are all in need of elder-care insurance, lifetime anti-inflammation drug therapies, knee and back braces, step-in bath tubs and scooters. I, for one, patently reject this poison being injected into the atmosphere – as being as destructive and deadly, and perhaps just as blanketing as the carbon footprint. Not only does this occur as a matter of course but it could be, albeit somewhat paranoidedly so, the desired progression of the “useful life” theory as taught to us in all of our Accounting 101 courses decades ago. Translated as such: it’s way too expensive for people to thrive into old age – and so, just die already and get off the money-drain. Ok, that’s somewhat cynical, but you have to consider……..
We all know that in many cultures the aged, the oldest, the people in their 90s, are valued and revered for their wisdom and experience and contribution. In western culture, I’m not so sure that this is the general assumption, expectation or candle flame. But, do we in fact allow this to be the image of ourselves as we “age”. Message: we’ve been aging since we arrived out of the womb. This is just the next phase. And, until such time as your brain and legs and imagination cease to function, you are as vital as you want to be. Granted, some of the chemicals and joints may not be at optimum levels but as we all know, there are approximately 25 years in the beginning also where your brain isn’t fully developed and so, we were then, perhaps for the first 25% of our lives, working with diminished capacity.
In conjunction with my determination over the past several years to “question everything”, a stance I carefully try to communicate to my kids, I got to wondering how we ever got to the point where we would accept western culture’s perspective that you are all washed up and on the downward slope after 50, 60,70 or even 80. I think I get the implied assumption of people who have not had older surviving let alone thriving parents, grandparents or other mentors who lived vitally into their 80s and 90s that somehow they didn’t rightly see or have an in-house example of what life could be decades, yes, decades after their kids left the nest or you “retired” from the pinnacle of your “brilliant” corporate career. To all of this, I say merely, “Really?” Perhaps it’s because my Mom held a full time job until she was 75 years old that I had the benefit of an example of things from a slightly longer lens.
Yes, perhaps I’ll admit that I have become somewhat jaded in my time about the relative value of spending 3 or 4 decades in support of the big metropolitan or digital corporate so-called life-support system that we so blindly value in this country. Not in any way dismissing the practical aspects of needing to make a living, and, choose as we will and often must, and as I have done in conjunction with current need, I know that at least some of it comes from where I live, in the New York Metropolitan area. Well, after 2008 we pretty much all saw where that model has gone as droves of middle to upper management in Wall Street and supporting firms have been politely but permanently shown the door.
That’s just one fold in the book of lessons here. For all the women, like me, who gave up their corporate careers to stay at home and raise their kids, and then were surprised one day when we got back in the car after unloading the last one at college and were left with a huge void of usefulness and purpose, I heard, if not only in my own ears, a thundering call and door of opportunity. This is one of the reasons why I focus so on several women who are blowing through several decades after 50, still brightly, happily and vividly striding on in intellectual, practical and creative careers and embracing the carpe diem approach to every single morning. Somewhere along the line they dispensed with the blinders, never had them or were mentored as such.
Why does society project messages like we are all washed up? As I have carefully studied the government over the past several years I can, if I step back just a little, see that the entire structure, at least in the realm of medical care, employment-usefulness and intrinsic value in this country is geared toward minimizing the budget-defying care of the indigent, declining masses that have so affectionately been monikered as “retired citizens”. How sad. How ugly. I have learned to see that the word “retired” is indeed one of the least inspiring if not destructive words I have ever heard.
As I look around at my landscape, I see a huge potential of humanity, free to indulge, in what is presently projected to be the declining years but is really, actually just mid-life – yours and mine. Consider the following quote from the following article in the New York Times:
The short answer is Dr. Samuel Johnson’s, in a letter to James Boswell in 1777: “Depend upon it, sir, when a man knows he is to be hanged in a fortnight, it concentrates his mind wonderfully.” Ahhh, words to live by.
www.nytimes.com/interactive/2014/10/23/magazine/old-masters-at-top-of-their-game.html
Well, after all of that, I’d scribed the following words to live by, as absorbed and formulated for myself, albeit somewhat slowly on my own little timeline progression:
- question everything especially your own place on the long, long thread that is your life
- raising children is but generally-speaking, a 18-28 year blip on your radar screen, a phase to be reveled in, enjoyed as much as possible and, ended, vocationally-speaking, and joyfully – it is not a life-defining, lifetime-spanning career no matter how you choose to fit it into the structure of your “other” life unless you willingly, cognitively and happily choose this as your own self-fulfilling vocation
- seek creativity rather than daily lists of mundane tasks that leave you empty at bedtime
- look at every single day as an opportunity to do something or many new things
- go somewhere and see something new – you don’t need money for this. if you have 2 feet that work, eyes that see and ears that hear, you can do this – open the door and walk out
- read – anything and everything and weigh, scrutinize, test and filter
- watch tv and other media with a huge filter, a quizzical stance and a limited time capsule
- don’t accept anyone else’s definition or version of expectations of yourself
- make a list of things you’ve always wanted to do
- make a list of YOUR OWN interests and passions – don’t include any that relate to your kids, spouse or best friends – they should be uniquely your own.
- your experiences regardless of financial contribution are useful and relevant in the larger world and, they contain threads and markers of interest, weak and strong to be listened to, rolled over, looked at and expanded
- if you must be distracted or dissuaded, make it temporary and return to your core passions as soon as possible
Well there now. There is my little rant for the day. Take it with a grain of salt if you’d like. Delete it from your page if you will. Just food for thought as you travel along your very own timeline. Dismiss all I’ve said as hogwash, but whatever you do today, do it totally and mindfully. Carpe Diem!