Today my wife and I had an interesting and long overdue introductory conversation about our new stage of life and what we are gonna do with it. I can start drawing Social Security in less than five years! We talked in a round about way (never really facing the truth of the failed health system here, no handicapped access here, no progressive care here, etc etc) what it would be like to continue living and working here in Macedonia. Then we talked about the wild cards - my dad, her health and our fragility as we get older - these are not the crisis that you can predict on a timetable, but at the same time you can be certain that they are much closer to your immediate future than they were last decade. We talked about the trade-offs of various decisions and in the end, stayed precariously right where we have been for the last five years or so, the decision to NOT make any decisions and therefore not close any potential doors nor conclude current highly valued activities.
This is pretty short-sighted of all of us, and probably foolish from a financial point of view, and definitely disastrous from a leadership point of view. As Joseph Coughlin of MIT said, "Over the past century, we’ve created the greatest gift in the history of humanity—thirty extra years of life—and we don’t know what to do with it!" And this is precisely where the decision to not decide is a catastrophic failure.
I have been doing a fair bit of reading on this topic and it was fascinating to see our conversation today, exactly followed the line of those articles - that I don't mind getting older, as long as I have all the abilities/mobility/intellect/strength/resources that I have today. And that is where this entire conversation breaks down - because we won't. We will become evermore dependent on someone as we lose these currently held gifts, in our ongoing physical breakdowns. And then we die, which is nevermind not important, its the living part I am addressing! Eternity is in God's hands not ours.
But this extra 30 years of living, now that is a conversation worth having and facing and planning and doing. Life is longer for sure, but better?
This is pretty short-sighted of all of us, and probably foolish from a financial point of view, and definitely disastrous from a leadership point of view. As Joseph Coughlin of MIT said, "Over the past century, we’ve created the greatest gift in the history of humanity—thirty extra years of life—and we don’t know what to do with it!" And this is precisely where the decision to not decide is a catastrophic failure.
I have been doing a fair bit of reading on this topic and it was fascinating to see our conversation today, exactly followed the line of those articles - that I don't mind getting older, as long as I have all the abilities/mobility/intellect/strength/resources that I have today. And that is where this entire conversation breaks down - because we won't. We will become evermore dependent on someone as we lose these currently held gifts, in our ongoing physical breakdowns. And then we die, which is nevermind not important, its the living part I am addressing! Eternity is in God's hands not ours.
But this extra 30 years of living, now that is a conversation worth having and facing and planning and doing. Life is longer for sure, but better?
