Author Archives: marika@2young2retire.com

You are brilliant, and the Earth is Hiring

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In May 2009, visionary author and speaker, Paul Hawken, gave a commencement address to the graduates of University of Portland.  He could have been speaking to those of the 50 plus generation.  Read this except:

“There is invisible writing on the back of the diploma you will receive, and in case you didn’t bring lemon juice to decode it, I can tell you what it says: YOU ARE BRILLIANT, AND THE EARTH IS HIRING. The earth couldn’t afford to send any recruiters or limos to your school. It sent you rain, sunsets, ripe cherries, night blooming jasmine, and that unbelievably cute person you are dating. Take the hint. And here’s the deal: Forget that this task of planet-saving is not possible in the time required. Don’t be put off by people who know what is not possible. Do what needs to be done, and check to see if it was impossible only after you are done.” Read more.

But Not for Lunch …

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Divorce rates for the general public are at their lowest since the swinging 70s, but U.S. census figures show the divorce rate among those over 65 has doubled since 1980; it grew to eight per cent in 2004 from 6.7 per cent in 2000. In Japan, a popular television drama Jukunen Rikon (mature divorce) featured a woman who dumps her husband after he retires. Not to make light of this, but does the joke ‘for better and for worse but not for lunch’ ring a bell?

A family story: A 50-something couple drive their youngest child to college and after the last box is unloaded and the final embrace concluded, they are back in the car about to pull away. The husband turns to his wife of 26 years and says, “Allow me to introduce myself …”

Here are some thoughts on why mature relationships are so vulnerable and a few simple ideas about how not to become a statistic of failure yourself.

You don’t have to be a psychologist to know that relationships are formed in the daily details and patterns of life together, going to work, raising children, keeping your lawn mowed and your dog curbed. Most of us 50 or better came of age, so to speak, in the era of the two-career family. This means that we were apart from our life partner for long periods of every day, and many of us liked it that way. Even if you would have preferred it otherwise, it was real life, and the longer we did it, the realer and more ingrained our patterns of relating.

Change, like more face time in the case of the Japanese wives whose spouses they have dubbed “wet leaves” for their tendency to cling, or a sudden emptying of the nest — can rock the very foundations. It happens in the best of families. How few family gatherings, including happy occasions like weddings or vacations, are models of harmony. I mean, who are these people? And, more to the point, who am I in the relationship?

Maybe we could all use some relationship training, starting say, in the elementary grades. Don’t hold your breath. In the meantime, here are a few things to try when you find yourself suddenly together again, for the first time.

Pretend you are just getting to know each other, and offer the interest, respect and good humor you’d give to a stranger you hope will become a friend.

Give each other space: OK, it’s a cliche, but we all need time alone, to think, reflect, just be, or be elsewhere. Even the most loving, committed partnerships can feel stifled by togetherness 24/7. If one of you traveled on business frequently or for long periods, the other got used to it, filled the time, and the reunion was all the sweeter, right? Make room for that.

Develop your listening skills. Listening is a good daily habit to cultivate and a true survival skill when things get heated. When we are immersed in careers, we become adept at listening selectively for information relevant to our work or the tasks at hand. This may even be a survival skill in our media-saturated world. But our intimate relationships call for more generous, attentive listening. We are all born communicators but listening has to be learned.

Set time aside to talk regularly about what matters: finances, family obligations, quality of life, how you could make each other happier. Let each takes a turn to speak while the other just listens, without comment. Next, the listener might “mirror” back what s/he heard. This focuses the mind wonderfully and can calm things down during conflicts or when there is a difficult decision ahead. Borrowed from a great tool: Conscious Loving: The Journey to Co-Commitment, Gay and Kathlyn Hendricks, Bantam Books, 1992.

Learn to accept change and go with the flow. At an Indian restaurant on New York’s Upper Westside, there is an ornate box by the entrance containing strips of paper, each printed with a message. Here’s the one: “Accept that which is coming in; let go of that which is going out. Want nothing. Embrace everything.”

Leave precedents for a court of law, especially those that start ‘you always …’ or “I never …” Here’s a practice: switch your domestic responsibilities for a few days, without judgment of the results.

Try something new together: dancing, photography, films. Plan a surprise for you both once a week or month. Become tourists in your own hometown for a day. Critique a movie or restaurant for each other. Create a time capsule of your favorite memories. Create a private joke collection.

All good, all the time: Speak only for yourself. Show your affection. Keep your conflicts private. Keep your word. Resolve your issues – or make a date to do so – before you hit the sheets. Give your relationship equal time. Slow down, savor and celebrate your moments together. Do lunch.

Eric Utne’s New Idea

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Eric Utne, founder of the Utne Reader and creator of the Salon movement in the 1990s — I was a member of one in New Jersey — has come up with an idea that blends the salon approach with his belief that “every city, town, and village in the world needs its own coulcil of elders.”  If the word ‘elder’ gives you the willies, Utne is out to change your mind.  He aims to “redeem the word elder — an archetypal social type, essential to any vibrant, sustainable community,” and we’re with him 100%.  In these pages, we reported the founding of The Elders which includes Nobel Peace Prize winners Nelson Mandela, Bishop Desmond Tutu, Kofi Annan, Jimmy Carter, Aung San Suu Kyi, and Muhammad Yunus.  Utne’s Community Earth Councils brings this idea home.  It will connect elders (50+) with those 16-18 of age to address global social and enviornmental challenges at the local level.  It’s an intergenerational initiative that is long overdue.

Homecoming

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This is probably not the best time to bring up home values since many of us have seen the valuation of our homes drop significantly over the last year or so.  This is all the more painful if we’ve come to think of our homes more as nest egg than as nest.  But since the housing follies are where the current financial meltdown began, I’m going to do it anyway.  I’ll begin with a caveat: Economics 101 was not my favorite subject and my understanding of finances is primitive.  That said, I know a sound explanation for a complicated problem when I encounter it, so if you are trying to understand how we got into this mess, I recommend you check out a 60 Minutes edition called House of Cards which aired in January this year. This past Sunday (October 5), a 60 Minutes report updated that information, A Look at Wall Street’s Shadow Market. It was chilling.

What I want to explore here is a different kind of value altogether: the value of a roof over your head, whether you own it or rent it.  To put it into context: homelessness is on the rise in America.  Not only that, homelessness among people in their 50s and 60s who once enjoyed a middle-class income, is also soaring.  In No Place to Call Home, the current issue of the AARP Bulletin describes the plight of older people — some 4,000 Americans over the age of 55 — sleeping in their cars in Los Angeles and Santa Barbara, CA, one of the most affluent of American cities, in many instances because they lost their homes to foreclosure.  Kind of brings the magnitude of the current crisis home, doesn’t it?

Homeownership has long been the American Dream, the one thing we were willing to save and sacrifice and postpone gratification for.  Today, the notion of 20% down and proof that your income could cover loan payments sounds positively antique.  One of the things banks always looked for — and these were typically a local branch where you did your other other banking so they knew you — was that your mortgage and real estate taxes not exceed 25% of your gross monthly income.  Those were the rules and, like them or not, they concentrated the mind wonderfully.

Some time in the 80s, as homes in many suburbs began to appreciate significantly, the idea of a home as an investment, or something that you could borrow more against, and even ‘flip’ to make money, came into being.  It seemed to have happened overnight.  One moment, you were perfectly content with a 30 year mortgage at 7% on a property you’d bought for 2.5 times your gross family income (another guideline), and the next, everyone had a strange gleam in their eyes.  You couldn’t go to a backyard cookout or have coffee with a friend without real estate being Topic #1.  Novelist Ann Beattie wrote of moving from her Virginia suburb to a rural area because she could not stomach this conversation any longer.

The idea that one’s home could become the source of significant wealth was very hard to resist for most people.  As long as homes continued to appreciate, salaries were rising and there were tax incentives to trading up, it made sense to do so.  The idea was that one day, you could sell that big house, downsize to something smaller, and pocket the difference.  Indeed, this was how many intended to finance a portion of their retirement savings, and for many it worked.  For a long time, trading up fever ruled. People who felt justified in buying as much house as they could carry were taking on financial risks they might never had considered had it been a different kind of investment.

Some how, we lost sight of the fact that our homes were valuable for the kind of life (as opposed to lifestyle) they provide for us.  They represent shelter, safety, refuge, the one place where, as Robert Frost famously wrote, “when you have to go there, They have to take you in.”  I read those lines as a deep sense of responsibility to each other and for one another, a feeling of belonging to something larger than ourselves, of putting down roots, of having reasons to give as well as to get.  As older Americans, let’s model to others that we can, we must, go home again.

Guy Kawasaki on Entrepreneurship

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In his final posting for Sun Microsystems, business guru Guy Kawasaki offers “a list of the five most important lessons I’ve learned as an entrepreneur.”

  1. Focus on cash flow. I understand the difference between cash flow and profitability, and I’m not recommending that you strive for a lack of profitability. But cash is what keeps the doors open and pays the bills. Paper profits on an accrual accounting basis is of no more than secondary or tertiary importance for a startup. As my mother used to say, “Sales fixes everything.”
  2. Make a little progress every day. I used to believe in the big-bang theory of marketing: a fantastic launch that created such inertia that you flew to “infinity and beyond.” No more. Now my theory is that you make a little bit of progress every day–whether that’s making your product slightly better, increasing your skill in one small way, or closing one more customer. The reason the press writes about “overnight successes” is that they seldom happen–not because that’s how all businesses work.
  3. Try stuff. I also used to believe that it’s better to be smart than lucky because if you’re smart you can out-think the competition. I don’t believe that anymore–this is not to say that you should strive for a high level of stupidity. My point is that luck is a big part of many successes, so (a) don’t get too bummed out when you see a bozo succeed; and (b) luck favors the people who try stuff, not simply think and analyze. As the Chinese say, “One must wait for a long time before a Peking duck flies into your mouth.”
  4. Ignore schmexperts. Schmexperts are the totally bad combination of schmucks who are experts–or experts who are schmucks. When you first launch a product or service, they’ll tell you it isn’t necessary, can’t really work, or faces too much competition. If you succeed, then they’ll say they knew you would succeed. In other words, they don’t know jack shiitake. If you believe, try it. If you don’t believe, listen to the schmexperts and stay on the porch.
  5. Never ask anyone to do something that you wouldn’t do. This goes for customers (“fill out these twenty-five fields of personal information to get an account for our website”) to employees (“fly coach to Mumbai, meet all day the day you arrive, and fly back that night”). If you follow this principle, you’ll almost always have a good customer service reputation and happy employees.

I hold these truths to be self-evident and hope that you can use them to kick butt and change the world.

Old-Fashioned Community Building

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Are online communities replacing real ones?  Have you noticed that most people are gazing into a hand-held device rather than making eye contact? Have you observed how many people are plugged into their private world of music? Do you have to pull your grandkids away from their Wii or other video game to play Monopoly or toss a ball around? Are you using email to 1. send birthday greetings (guilty!), 2. offer sympathy, 3. get something off your chest (ouch)?

I couldn’t live without the Internet and my cell phone but the way we are today makes me nostalgic for the years I lived in Hoboken, NJ, a true walking town where every errand could lead to a conversation, a collaboration, a dinner invitation or even (so I heard) a proposal of marriage. On a fine summer evening, we would sit on our stoop on 11th Street and chat with neighbors on theirs, or with passersby. A neighbor and I planted flowers in the divider down the middle of our street one summer, and when I go back there, it still makes me feel really happy. I felt very safe living there, knowing a lot of my neighbors, the restaurant owners, the local merchants. Building community the old-fashioned way is still possible. Here are a few ideas on how to get started.

Turn off your TV and/or computer. Leave your house. Look up when you are walking. Know your neighbor. Sit on your stoop. Greet people. Plant flowers. Use your library. Play together. Help a lost dog. Share what you have. Buy from local merchants. Take children to the park. Garden together. Read stories aloud. Dance in the street. Talk to the mail carrier. Listen to the birds. Put up a swing. Help carry something heavy. Donate what you are not using. Have potlucks. Support neighborhood schools. Fix it even if you didn’t break it. Ask a question. Open your shades. Ask for help when you need it. Hand write a thank you note. Pick up litter. Hire young people for odd jobs. Turn up the music. Turn down the music. Organize a block party. Start a tradition. Share your skills. Bake extra and share. Honor elders. Barter for your goods. Volunteer your time. Take back the night. Sing together. Learn from new and uncomfortable angles. Listen before you react to anger. Mediate a conflict. Seek to understand.

(Thanks to Mary Barknecht, a Voluntary Simplicity workshop leader based in New York City, for the tips.)

Getting Hip Via the Internet

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Symptoms are God’s way of telling us that we need to pay attention to our bodies.  So when Howard began to experience severe pain and weakness in his lower back, he immediately sought medical help.  He went from one specialist to another, was prescribed painkillers and physical therapy, which helped some, but the problem didn’t clear up.  Then our own general practitioner, an MD and homeopathic physician, came up with the correct diagnosis: It’s your hips. It made perfect sense: he was 72; he had been athletic most of his life, a tennis player and runner, both of which are notoriously hard on the hip joints.

The next step will be familiar to many of you: Howard turned to the Internet to research hip replacement options.  Some 122 million Americans — 56% of the population — are doing just that, according to a Center for Studying Health System Change report.  And while the so-called ‘elderly’ 65 and older trail their younger counterparts in using the Internet to seek advice on their health, this remains one of the fastest growing categories of Internet use.  Take Web MD, for example (we do!), which has a handy symptom checker that can either compel you to seek immediate medical advice if your symptoms are not worrisome enough in themselves, or calm you down enough to think clearly.  As a smart person of a certain age, you don’t need a professional to recognize that chest pain, shortness of breath and/or dizziness require emergency response.

Howard’s story has a good outcome.  He remembered having read that tennis star, Jimmy Connors, was back on the courts after having a hip replaced.  So he Googled “Jimmy Connors’s hip” and voila! Jimmy’s New Hip, a website with all the information he needed about the Wright CONSERVE Total Hip.  Intrigued, he next researched (using the Internet again) who in our area of South Florida was working with this hip replacement system  He discovered that a young surgeon named Vincent Fowble was regularly performing this surgery at Jupiter Medical Center.  Several appointments, consultations and X-Rays later, Howard was scheduled for the first of two hip replacement surgeries that have essentially gotten him back on the tennis court. Without the Internet, this would have taken longer, and cost him time and more pain.

You may have heard that some MDs look askance at self-diagnosing and, if you were to proceed to act on that information alone, you’re running a risk of getting it wrong.  Like I tell my yoga students, while yoga offers many health benefits, it is not intended as a substitute for competent medical advice.  Ditto, the Internet.

Elegy: Growing Up is Hard to Do

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Every so often, we get a film about aging that touches a nerve in those of us of a certain age.  About Schmidt was one such film.  Savages, another.  Now in new release is Elegy, starring Penelope Cruz and Ben Kingsley, a film that captures what the word elegy means: a mournful, melancholy, or plaintive poem, esp. a funeral song or a lament for the dead.

David Kepesh, 70, successful cultural maven — the film opens with Kepesh (Kingsley) being interviewed by Charlie Rose — is dead inside, or very nearly so.  He teaches, he is interviewed and interviews aspiring new writers, and he struggles to assert the life force, expressed largely through sex or his own ’emancipated manhood,’ as he puts it.  His only friend and fellow writer/academic, George O’Hearn (Dennis Hopper) appears to be similarly stuck: sleeping with available younger students, and in his case, cheating on his wife of many years.  Kepesh is estranged from his own son Kenneth (Peter Sarsgaard), the child he abandoned in a divorce, and unable to give him support in his own marital crisis. He is in a 20 year affair with Carolyn (Patricia Clarkson in a glowing smaller role), enjoying great sex and fending off deeper commitment.

Into one of Kepesh’s classes and his life, steps the luscious Cuban emigre, Consuela Castillo (Penelope Cruz).  At a holiday party for his students, he seduces her with his erudition and worldliness.  They become lovers despite, as he points out, a 30+ year gap in their ages.  But she remains something of a mystery to him.  At one point, they examine Goya’s portrait of the Naked Maja and Consuela blocks out all but the woman’s direct gaze.  Who am I to you, she seems to be asking, a question Consuela will later put to David as they dine in a restaurant. Says George in one of their many man-to-man talks, “Beautiful women are invisible; we’re so dazzled by the outside that we never make it inside.”  The truth is, David and George haven’t truly made it to the inside of anything, and time is running out.

This is a film about growing up, and how it eludes us when we allow ourselves to be captivated by the surfaces of life: youth, beauty, success, sexuality, all of which pass, often before we are ready to let them go and find something deeper to live for.

How Might I/We?

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Sounds like a question, but actually it’s much more. These three little words suggest that there is always an answer even if it is not immediately apparent. In fact, how-might-I/we? encourages us to dig a little deeper and get beneath our preconceived notions and cultural conditioning. It’s a radical, mind-opening approach that costs nothing and can lead to big breakthroughs.

We first encountered this model at a day long session at IDEO, a Palo Alto design firm and innovation generator, courtesy of the Purpose Prize summit. Here’s a quote from IDEO’s thinking on community that gives you an idea of what they are about: We believe that the power of community is stronger than that of a single individual, organization, or brand. Beyond the physical, cognitive and emotional factors of design, we foremost consider the social factors, asking questions and evaluating answers: How might the user’s relationships influence or motivate behaviors? How might an experience be shared with others? What is the meaning of belonging, and of identity? What drives the feeling of membership or loyalty to a bigger cause or group?

A good place to apply the how-might-I/we question is to the time of life still (despite all the evidence to the contrary) known as retirement. Let’s assume, for the sake of discussion, that you won’t be following the beaten path of your parents’ generation into the ‘role-less role’ they took for granted. Lots of reasons why your future will follow a different model, and not having sufficient funds is just one of them. If you’ve been paying even casual attention to the longevity revolution, you sense that something big has changed.

Recently, we were at a retreat at Kripalu Center for Yoga and Health. Sitting around a picnic table were eight individuals ages mid-40 and up. Seven of us had parents in their late 80s or 90s; one had an 86 year old mother who kept a busy volunteer schedule in her community and had no intention of slowing down. Clearly, this woman wasn’t settling for any so called age-appropriate role.

Between midlife and truly old age (whatever that is) is a phase most life-cycle experts haven’t given as much attention to as they might (and will). So if you often feel that you are up a creek, one paddle short, you are not alone. You’ll be better off imagining what you want out of the next 20 or more years. Set yourself free from preconceived notions of what you ‘should’ be doing, and be guided by the possibilities of discovering something you really love, whether for a paycheck or the fulfillment of giving back in some way. Innovate. Use IDEO’s How might we/I question when you have an important decision to make. You may be pleasantly surprised at how you answer.

Facebook: The New Rolodex?

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Once upon a time, a stuffed Rolodex was a sign of a well-connected, highly-motivated person, someone who did a lot of networking and gathering contacts on the hey-you-never-know premise. That was then. Today, we have other choices like LinkedIn which builds a professional network on the principle of six degrees of separation, that is, who you know, and who they know, ad infinitum. But it’s actually more, because there is huge incentive for members to build professional profiles, invite in associates and colleagues, get and give recommendations, and ask questions (starting a kind of forum). According to an article in Business Week (Business Tips for Late Facebook Arrivals) by venture capitalist, Richard Moran, we should stop thinking of Facebook as a place for young people to connect and share photos and hot new dance clubs, and embrace it as a very grownup tool to further our careers, businesses, and causes. Moran writes:

Your Rolodex is alive and following you. In order to close a deal recently, I was desperate to reach an executive. I called his office, sent him an e-mail, and even called his boss. Nothing happened for days. After all else failed, I checked him out on Facebook, friended him and he accepted my request although we had not met. I sent him a message, he responded, and the deal was considered. Facebook did in a matter of seconds what traditional telecommunications and e-mail couldn’t accomplish in days.

And then, of course, there is www.2young2retire.net, the aim of which is to help you meet other retirement-resistant grownups who are eager to educate themselves about the possibilities of life beyond their core career, and instinctively understand that community is what makes makes this important transition smoother, more rewarding, and fun.