How do you make the most of whatever you have? It’s not an insignificant question, but not exactly a new one either. Or is it? When it comes to making the most of our years, it actually is. Consider this: A person turning 65 today can reasonably expect to reach their 84th birthday and beyond, while in 1950, the average person who reached 65 was barely around past their 70th!
Time remains our most precious resource, to be sure. After all, you can make more money, more friends, more love. But we generally cannot make more time. Still, advances in medicine and technology have created a nation of people with about a decade-and-a-half more time than they had, on average, a mere half-century ago.
Instead of picturing how long you expect to live and then adding a couple decades to it, try this: Imagine having 20 years to fill right now.
Now the question is what to do with that time. How do we widen our thinking beyond just the ongoing fight against disease and physical suffering (the fight for quantity of life) to take on the opportunity/challenge of filling our longer lives with increased meaning? That is, the fight for quality of life.
There’s no one right answer, but the six ideas listed in author Marc Freedman’s recent Wall Street Journal piece are pretty interesting. The article, “How to Make the Most of Longer Lives,” is filled with interesting analysis and cool charts, but the upshot is:
- Think about how to make transitions between life phases smooth and gradual,
- Create and avail ourselves of “design schools for the second half of life,”
- Invest time and thought in how to finance your longevity,
- Build new and better intergenerational bridges,
- Incentivize the best and brightest to focus on innovating for our aging years,
- Name this new phase of life, because naming is claiming.
I’m especially struck by Freedman’s careful attention to both material and psychological-spiritual needs. In other words, the care of our whole selves remains as important as ever in later life, and attending to the one actually enhances our ability to attend to the other.
Ultimately, I wonder if we wouldn’t all benefit from asking ourselves what we’d do if we suddenly found ourselves with 20 extra years to live. I know there are no guarantees and that, as a generation, we feel more rushed than ever. So it’s hard to imagine having any “extra” time at all, let alone 20 years’ worth.
But perhaps that’s the key. Instead of picturing how long you expect to live and then adding a couple decades to it, try this: Imagine having 20 years to fill right now. What would you do? Perhaps now’s the time to get started on some of those ideas. Perhaps you should do them now because you’re more likely to have plenty of tomorrows to attend to all the other “stuff” that’s not on your initial list.
This is no naive plea for the wisdom of narcissism, i.e., abandoning all obligations and responsibilities in favor of whatever we want in the moment. It’s simply an invitation to budget our time with a presumption of greater abundance – an invitation to celebrate today those things we most enjoy, because we probably have more tomorrows (more than we imagine) for the things we don’t.
Listed for many years in Newsweek as one of America’s “50 Most Influential Rabbis” and recognized as one of our nation’s leading “Preachers and Teachers,” by Beliefnet.com, Rabbi Brad Hirschfield serves as the President of Clal–The National Jewish Center for Learning and Leadership, a training institute, think tank, and resource center nurturing religious and intellectual pluralism within the Jewish community, and the wider world, preparing people to meet the biggest challenges we face in our increasingly polarized world.
An ordained Orthodox rabbi who studied for his PhD and taught at The Jewish Theological Seminary, he has also taught the University of Pennsylvania, where he directs an ongoing seminar, and American Jewish University. Rabbi Brad regularly teaches and consults for the US Army and United States Department of Defense, religious organizations — Jewish and Christian — including United Seminary (Methodist), Yeshivat Chovevei Torah (Modern Orthodox) Luther Seminary (Lutheran), and The Jewish Theological Seminary (Conservative) — civic organizations including No Labels, Odyssey Impact, and The Aspen Institute, numerous Jewish Federations, and a variety of communal and family foundations.
Hirschfield is the author and editor of numerous books, including You Don’t Have To Be Wrong For Me To Be Right: Finding Faith Without Fanaticism, writes a column for Religion News Service, and appears regularly on TV and radio in outlets ranging from The Washington Post to Fox News Channel. He is also the founder of the Stand and See Fellowship, which brings hundreds of Christian religious leaders to Israel, preparing them to address the increasing polarization around Middle East issues — and really all currently polarizing issues at home and abroad — with six words, “It’s more complicated than we know.”