Having friends of mixed ages is valuable for so many reasons. It keeps you tuned in to cultural references that would be lost to you if you never left your age ghetto, for one. For another, it invites you to reflect on where things stood in your life at various points on the age continuum. That’s the one I’ll be focusing on here.
We recently invited two delightful people to dinner. L. had been our trainer for three years before she handed us off to a friend so she could concentrate on her studies. (I mentioned her in another recent blog entry.) During those years we had never met her husband J., so this was an opportunity to fill that gap. These two energetic young folks are about 45, shockingly close to half our age. They have two kids, one a high school junior and the other a college freshman.
J. is trained as an engineer. I’m not clear about the following details, but I think he created an app that was so lucrative that he was able to retire on the income from it at a ridiculously early age. I know this is the fulfillment of many people’s dreams, but it’s a dream that has some potentially troubling side effects. It can hollow out your motivation and can make everything that follows seem anticlimactic. The practical need to work can produce some unanticipated creative results. Dostoevsky produced a novel, appropriately titled The Gambler, to pay off his gambling debts. Fill in your own examples here.
Toward the end of dinner, J. asked us to project ourselves back to his age. I can’t recreate his exact words, but basically, he wanted to know what we were thinking about what lay ahead for us at that point. I sensed that behind his question were several painful concerns: Have I peaked? If so, is what’s ahead all on the downslope? Is there nothing more to look forward to?
Our 45th year, 1984, found us in Houston, just two years after a major move from New Hampshire. We were still adjusting to our presence in a state we never imagined would be our home for 13 years. Our friends in New Hampshire were horrified by our decision to leave their (and our) paradise in favor of a place of sage brush, cactus and antisemites. In fact Houston was a very liveable, cosmopolitan city where our work flourished – mine as a middle school and high school teacher with a position at Rice University where I launched two writing-related projects for students and teachers, and Rosellen’s as a teacher at the University of Houston and a writer with a growing reputation as a poet, short story writer and novelist. We could not have imagined any of these new paths in our work lives two years earlier, not to mention the changes it brought for our daughters, newly launched as big city kids, surrounded by a robust Jewish community, which was definitely lacking in that rural “paradise.”
I’m not going to repeat the timeline of the 30 years that followed in New Hampshire, except to say that the 15+ years between my turn toward 60 and my retirement at 74 was one of the most significant in my life, both personally and professionally. We became grandparents, a new role that added depth and meaning to our lives. I was involved in creating two new institutions – a school and an innovative teacher preparation program – at a point when many people are preparing themselves for retirement. If I had decided at the start of that cycle that it was time to fold the tents and slide comfortably into retirement, I would have missed out on two of my most consequential new lives.
Based on those experiences, I found myself almost shouting in J.’s ear, “J., you’ve probably got at least 3 or 4 new lives awaiting you, if only you choose to make yourself receptive to those possibilities. Don’t let yourself miss out on the fun and reward that could await you. Sure, it’s tempting to drift toward that indefinite end point in a state of low anxiety, low responsibility and low accountability, but where time is a great wad of cotton candy that dissolves on your tongue in small bites, leaving no trace and providing no nourishment.
L. will be finishing her very specialized training courses in a year and a half at the same time you’ll become empty nesters when your son graduates from high school. That’s likely to mean a move and a new start. When we washed up in Houston a whole new world opened for us. You can’t imagine what lies ahead and where the ride up that steep new learning curve will deposit you. You’re one of a very small number of people who are untethered from the need to bring home a paycheck. You’ve got so much energy and talent that are not going to be satisfied by just pursuing your hobbies.
Do something with the considerable time you have left to go out fully awake and engaged. You’ve only got one shot at this life. Don’t squander it.” End of lecture.
