Aging

A wailing siren and a soft, reassuring hand. That is all I remember from my ambulance trip in suburban St. Louis in August 2008. My heart had stopped just as the paramedic team arrived right after my giving a speech. “Break a leg,” is what they tell you before going on stage. Well, I’d broken my ankle a month earlier, had a serious bacterial infection in my leg, and was on strong antibiotics (as it turned out, the heart failure was likely an allergic reaction to the medication).

Life used to be so simple. We learned till our early 20s, earned till our mid-60s, and then retired happily to our La-Z Boy. We paid our dues early in our career so we could coast with our three-martini lunches (especially if we were male and pale). Society’s outdated three-stage model (learn, earn, retire) taught us...

I used to think the whole “age is just a number” line was a bit of a cop-out, an empty cliché. Not so much anymore. And I can thank Satchel Page, a pitcher from the Negro Baseball League. Satchel was recruited to join the Cleveland Indians soon after Jackie Robinson became the first black Major Leaguer. Paige became the oldest rookie in Major League history at age 42, even though he wasn’t sure of his actual age. It was a good thing, too. Paige continued...

We learn in our teens. We earn in our twenties. We yearn in our thirties. We burn in our forties. We discern in our fifties. And, we adjourn in our sixties. But, what if we lived life as a mash-up? Maybe we ought to “unlearn and return” to new subjects and experiences throughout life. Live by the “learn, earn, yearn, burn” rule and I promise you heartburn and a midlife crisis. The Game of Life was created by Milton Bradley in 1860. Isn’t it time you deviated from that linear, one-size-fits-all board game?

In 2018, I went scuba diving in Indonesia with my then 80-year-old dad. One morning before our first dive, I took an online longevity quiz that said I’d likely live to 98-years-old. I asked my dad how long he thought he’d live. He mused for a moment, and then to my great surprise, said, “98!” What’s miraculous about that is...

During my time at Airbnb, I recognized a new kind of elder emerging in the workplace. Not the traditional elder of the past, regarded with reverence simply for years lived. But a Modern Elder, striking into new territory due to the growing value of their relevance: the ability to use timeless wisdom to address modern day problems. By understanding the importance of context, today’s Modern Elder is the perfect alchemy of curiosity and wisdom (curiosity to open up possibilities and wisdom to distill down what is essential).

In most circles, it’s almost impossible to talk about getting older without the conversation turning to retirement, and questions of “when, where, and how.” Of course, no one stops to ask why. The “why” is built into what we’ve been taught our final act should look like—the promised pot of gold at the end of the rainbow. Retire is what you do when you reach a certain age—stop working, slow down, and take it easy. And if you can’t afford this dream, it’s easy to feel like you’ve been cheated, or you’re a failure.