Adulthood Two

Gerry checked a book out of the library entitled Composing a Further Life, by Mary Catherine Bateson.  He heard about it on National Public Radio.   As I am waiting for Brenda to arrive, I picked it up and read the first few pages.  It is a fascinating analysis of all the meaning and challenges associated with the extension of lifespan which America in particular has experienced in this generation.  The author points out that when Social Security was invented in Germany in the 19th century, 65 was an age that very few people achieved!   Now it is not unusual for people to live twenty years beyond that.

The author calls this "the age of active wisdom" and points out all the ways that this affects everything in our culture, economically and socially, and how we now have a four-generation society.  Great-grandparents are the new grandparents, for one thing.  Grandparents now can be forty, active and energetic.

I am looking forward to reading this book, during the times that I can get my hands on it.  It is quite relevant to my own "struggles" [questions about how] to re-define what I have been calling my retirement.  In fact, composing my second adulthood may be a better way of thinking about it.  That allows for far more creativity, and has less negative connotations associated with it.   Yes, that is what is before me.

As the author points out,  it is not like tacking an extra room on a house because you unexpectedly now have the resources to do so.   It is more a question of how that extra room that you now have completely reconfigures the entire house itself.

Adulthood two is a time to be creative and active, a time for insight and wisdom, a bottomless well of exciting possibilities.   Yeah!   How much there is to look forward to, even if I don't know what it is!