Disrupt Aging

Here’s the current view of aging in America: “a process of deterioration, dependency, reduced potential, family dispersal and digital incompetence.” This is our dominant cultural view of aging, according to a 2015 report.*

If that scenario doesn’t work for you (and it certainly doesn’t for me), you will enjoy reading the new book by AARP CEO Jo Ann Jenkins, Disrupt Aging: a Bold New Path to Living Your Best Life at Every Age. It’s a book about changing the mindset about aging in our society, creating a new landscape for living as an older adult.

One of the reasons I have started my online store Savvy Senior Products is to be a part of a movement I felt was just starting - to redefine how we view aging in our society. I’m certainly not ready to retire and wait through my “golden years’ to die. And I didn’t find that my peers wanted to either.

We could agree we were in a transitional period of our lives, with children grown or a particular career coming to a close, but our expectations was very different from that of our parents or grandparents. Our expectations weren’t even in sync with the approach encouraged in our 30’s or 40’s – when, as financial planners, we counseled clients to focus on that ultimate goal – retirement.  

So, where was I – and my peers? Why did we want to start businesses or work part time or try an altogether new career instead of retire? Why were our expectations incongruent with current cultural norms for how to act and what to do with the rest of our lives, which for some of us could be 25 more years?

Simply put, says CEO Jo Ann Jenkins, because we older adults with years of living ahead of us find ourselves in the 21^st century with social institutions, policies and practices designed for 20^th century lifestyles when life spans were much shorter. And this longer life span is not just from adding on years of poor health and decline. Thanks to lifestyle changes, preventive medicine and better treatment of chronic disease, these can be healthy and productive years.  

Jenkins does a good job of mapping out changes that could make a difference, including changes in our health care system to now start focusing on overall well-being as we age, not just treatment.  

And it’s not just the social institution of health care that needs to change to better meet the needs of modern seniors. Changes in the workplace to accommodate older workers, “universal design” in housing to make our homes safer and more accessible, even replacing the outdated model for “retirement savings” that better accommodates our long term financial resiliency.

Here’s hoping this important book furthers the discussion about a topic critical to me, my peers and the older generations to come.  

*E.  Lindland, M. Fond, A. Haydon and N. Kendall-Taylor, Gauging Aging: Mapping the Gaps between Expert and Public Understandings of Aging in America (Washington,
DC: FrameWorks Institute, 2015).