On the general topic of “The Meaning of Life”…
The New Old Age
What a new life stage can teach the rest of us about how to find meaning and purpose—before it’s too late
By David Brooks
Around that time, she heard about what was then a new program at Stanford University called the Distinguished Careers Institute. It’s for adults, mostly in their 50s and 60s, who are retiring from their main career and trying to figure out what they want to do with the rest of their lives. The fellows spend a year learning together as a cohort of a few dozen, reinventing themselves for the next stage. “Somebody told me it offered breathing room, a chance to take a step back,” Kenner recalled.
But that is not how she experienced it: “It wasn’t breathing space; it was free fall.”
On her first day, Phil Pizzo, who’d been a researcher and dean of Stanford’s medical school before founding the program, told the group to throw away their résumés: “That’s no longer who you are. That’s not going to help you.” Kenner took his words to heart. “I thought, Okay, nothing I’ve done matters. Everything I do going forward has to be different.”
Kenner’s first few days on campus were a shock. The fellows, most of whom had been wildly successful in tech or finance or some other endeavor, were no longer running anything. They were effectively college freshmen again, carrying backpacks, trying to get into classes, struggling to remember how to write a term paper. One day Kenner walked into the program’s study area and saw “the guy who was the biggest success and the biggest asshole” in the program lying on his back on the floor.
“What are you doing down there?” Kenner asked.
He couldn’t answer; he was hyperventilating.
…
Stanford, Harvard, and Notre Dame have three of the most established postcareer programs in the U.S., but others are popping up. I learned about them when my wife and I agreed to teach at the University of Chicago’s version, the Leadership and Society Initiative, which launches this fall. These programs are proliferating now because we’re witnessing the spread of a new life stage.
The idea of adolescence, as we now understand it, emerged over the course of the first half of the 20th century. Gradually people began to accept that there is a distinct phase of life between childhood and adulthood; the word teenager came into widespread use sometime in the 1940s.
In the 21st century, another new phase is developing, between the career phase and senescence. People are living longer lives. If you are 60 right now, you have a roughly 50 percent chance of reaching 90. In other words, if you retire in your early or mid-60s, you can expect to have another 20 years before your mind and body begin their steepest decline.
Full article: https://archive.ph/uFvcT
