Longevity Lifestyles: To Work or Not to Work and Why?

I wrote Creating Magic in Midlife before I had the life I have now living in Ecuador. I always wanted to live internationally. I worked as a trauma therapist but retired from that profession. I asked myself what can give my life meaning? The answer is I live as a creative.

My days are full of friends, work, learning and more. I am an accomplished writer with several projects being developed. My life has purpose and meaning.

What Gives Your Life Meaning?

This articles explores the idea that for many of us, work has always been important whether we loved working or not. Work! A simple word laden with lifetimes of experiences. Once we reach midlife and beyond, where might work fit or not?

I don’t like the word retirement because it might neglect our need for purpose. Hopefully, we have years to live with hours to spend somehow. How? For each of us, we might need to discover what gives us meaning and purpose. Or, maybe like me, you continue to do what’s been fun and interesting like art and writing. For you? Maybe the adventure of travel, contributing to a cause, or keep doing work you have done and still enjoy, or even a second career. Your choice!

What is the longevity factor? Here is an excerpt from my book, Creating Magic in Midlife (and beyond):

There aren’t too many books that have literally changed my life, but one of them is The Longevity Factor: The New Reality of Long Careers and How It Can Lead to Richer Lives by Lydia Bronte, PhD. Bronte, director of the Long Careers Study and the Aging Society Project, believes that life spans of up to 150 years could be commonplace by the year 2090.

Who Did Bronte Interview and Who Do You Admire Who Still Works?

Bronte interviewed scores of people from the ages of 65 to 101 and concludes that older people can do some of their best work later in life, sometimes in entirely new careers. Her biographical profiles provide mountains of evidence that satisfying work makes for an optimum longevity lifestyle.

Her stellar interviewees include well-known names like Norman Cousins, Norman Vincent Peale, Eileen Ford, Barbara McClintock, Julia Child, Studs Terkel, Jessica Tandy, and Linus Pauling – plus lesser known individuals like Nobel Prize-winning physicist Rosalyn Yarrow. What these people have in common is enthusiasm and it’s contagious. After reading this book, you too may decide that continuing to work is more desirable than retirement!

Options for Continuing to Work and Why? Which Do You Relate to?

Bronte feels that the option to continue working should be available to everyone, and she offers career models for people interested in working past the customary retirement age. I saw myself in one of those models: I’m an Explorer, one who makes periodic changes throughout life in the pursuit of opportunity and growth. I’ve been a teacher, filmmaker, psychotherapist, writer, seminar leader, and speaker.

Bronte’s other types include the Homesteader, one who chooses a career path early and sticks with it (like Isaac Asimov or George Gershwin), and the Transformer, one who may work at one thing until midlife and then do something entirely different (like Julia Child, who was in the foreign service before she became a chef). Whatever road you are on matters less than the idea of finding new challenges for as long as you want.

Explorer, Homesteader, or Transformer, the choice is yours. In The Longevity Factor, Bronte coins a term that can invigorate a lagging midlifer – a second middle age; a time between 50 and 76, which is characterized by continued activity, greater vitality, and a more positive outlook.

Perhaps the most committed and personally involved student I read about was a 70-year-old woman who had not been a student since she left medical school in her 20s to get married. Exactly 50 years after getting her undergraduate degree, she received her master’s degree in adult education and gerontology. Then she decided to get her divinity degree – at age 72.

What Can Your 2nd Half Look Like?

Although Bronte emphasizes that there’s nothing wrong with retiring, she says that the option to continue to work should be available to everyone. Acknowledging the conflict this creates with the idea that the old must make way for the young, she calls for more flexible retirement policies and greater recognition of the productive, creative capacities of older people.

Let’s Have a Conversation:

What does your second half look like? Are you fully retired or do you work for fun?