A friend recently expressed personal amazement at the thought of soon turning sixty. She admitted being somewhat distressed when she’d turned forty and now her child was about to turn forty. How did that happen? I assured her the sixties were pretty good.
Somehow the reflection that at any age, our past will feel young gets lost in the moment. People in their forties see their twenties as youth; those in their eighties reflect on the youth of their sixties.
The personal sense of one’s own aging, with its casual ability to see across many decades and so many different societal norms and eras is hard to express to someone significantly younger.
In a meeting at work, discussion triggered a colleague to jokingly use metaphoric reference to S&H Green Stamps. Several of us howled – then looked to our youngest colleague who smiled and shrugged without a clue. I’m sure none of us had thought about those stamps for decades.
It’s a privilege, a challenge and a perk of life to work in the field of aging. It’s a field that’s everyone’s business. We’re all on our own personal journeys at a historic time when age itself is permanently changing the face of communities everywhere; a global phenomenon showing unprecedented numbers of people living well into later decades.
Dr. Joseph Coughlin is founder and director of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s AgeLab, which focuses not on aging, but rather the future of living. AgeLab focuses a multi-disciplinary research team “to invent new ideas and creatively translate technologies into practical solutions that improve people’s health and enable them to ‘do things’ throughout the life span”.
Terrific work. Check it out if you want at https://agelab.mit.edu .
In 2017 Coughlin wrote The Longevity Economy: Unlocking the World’s Fastest Growing, Most Misunderstood Market. He wrote the book as a wake-up call, contending that starting about age sixty-five, we’re actually beginning an entire life stage that’s in process of being invented.
Much of Coughlin’s research looks into what people want, not what conventional wisdom says they need. He champions a new social contract, recognizing that people in later decades are going back to school, starting small businesses, and possess significant purchasing power and knowledge.
Research and survey work is abundant in the field of aging. In Michigan, the Aging & Adult Services Agency (AASA) is part of the Michigan Department of Health and Human Services. They are in midst of an effort to both help assess service needs of Michigan’s population age sixty and over, and work towards certification of Michigan as a age-friendly state, an initiative of AARP and the World Health Organization (WHO).
Age-friendly status is highly compatible with Area Agency on Aging’s past work with the local Strategic Leadership Council to promote quality of life by helping municipalities and other decision makers consider distinct livability factors that promote vibrant living and social connection across the age, cultural and socio-economic spectrum.
AASA is in the middle of a statewide survey effort, asking persons age sixty and over to respond to a survey to help inform its planning for services and the state’s age-friendly initiative.
If you would like to be a part of this effort, follow this link and take the survey https://www.surveymonkey.com/r/oldercommunity . You can type that link into your browser and answer the questions as best you can. It will likely take a half hour or so. Thanks for considering it.