Life used to come with a very clear script.

Three crude acts:

You learned in the beginning
You worked in the middle
You retired and slowed down in the end.

That script made sense when most people didn’t live much past their seventies.

But there’s a New Old Age - hat tip to Time Magazine for the title of this note.

In their recent longevity issue they state how outdated that version of life is now.

Many of us will live into our eighties, nineties and beyond.

We’re living longer lives within social systems ill equipped and unprepared for that reality.

Most of our institutions still assume work ends, our contributions fade and so to do our bodies.

But The New Old Age argues the opposite:

We’re capable of learning, mentoring, contributing, and leading well into our elder years if we just keep up the regular fine tuning.

I’m in my late 40s, pretty soon I’ll be 50 and for a while my goals have shifted away from personal bests and max lifts. I tell people my goal is to be strong enough to lift all my great-grandbabies, buses willing.