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In this issue…
Meaningful Work...
Paid or Unpaid,
Through the Last Breath...
Guest editor, Janet M.
Hively, Ph.D., founded the Minnesota Vital Aging Network
and is the co-founder of a new organization, SHiFT,
“empowering midlife moves to meaning in life and work.”
Her career has also included school and community
planning, administration, and outreach for public and
non-profit organizations. What all of her efforts
have in common is that they are based on the philosophy
that communities and systems need to look at life
through a new paradigm consistent with planning for
personal growth all the way through life.
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In this consumer society, we think about
“work” as what people are paid for that generates goods and
services for the marketplace. So “retirement” brings an end
to “work.” The unpaid contributions of activities such as
parenting, volunteering, and caregiving are not counted or
appreciated. This bias favoring paid work negates the value
of homemakers and students, and most of all, older adults.
 It’s
time for us to create a new paradigm for the second journey
that fosters personal growth through meaningful work all the
way through life. We’ve all heard a retiree say, “Work was
my life, and now I have no life.” Recent research shows that
negative perceptions about aging like this actually reduce
longevity (Journal of Personality and Social Psychology,
Vol. 83, No. 2). Older adults involved in meaningful work are
healthier and more satisfied with life than others.
What is “meaningful work”? Whether paid or unpaid,
“work” is your productivity that benefits you and/or your
family and/or your employer and/or your community. You tend
to see your work as “meaningful” when you are applying your
skills in a focused effort to produce what you perceive to
be beneficial results. What taps your special passion will
be most meaningful. What stimulates new learning, for
example, is most meaningful to me. For all of us, as David
Whyte writes, “work provides an opportunity for discovering
and shaping a place where the self meets the world.”
Why
is this so important? In recent years, the primary
motivation for paid work in retirement has been to find
challenge and fulfillment rather than income. Changing
economic conditions, however, are encouraging continued
employment. The responsibility for funding retirement
savings has shifted from the employer to the employee.
This shift plus increased employee mobility due to
downsizing and dislocation, having families later in
life, and market pressures to spend more have resulted
in a drop in the rate and percent of retirement savings.
Uncertainty about the future of health care and Social
Security benefits, added to their lack of savings, lead
many mid-career adults to say that they expect to work
for pay all their lives! Overall, more than two-thirds
of Boomers told an AARP survey in 2003 that they plan to
work for pay “beyond traditional retirement age.”
Community vitality will require more older adult
productivity, whether paid or unpaid. The generational
shift caused by 76 million baby boomers coming into
retirement age this decade and next, with only 45
million younger adults in the pipeline to take their
places, will create a talent shortage in the workplace.
More volunteers will be needed by non-profit and public
agencies strapped for resources. More advocates and
caregivers for the elderly will be needed with the
increased push for “aging in place” along with the
dropping percentage of older adults with children to
care for them.
The great news is that our society’s expanding need
for lifelong learning and productivity is matched by the
capacity of older adults! Author Gene Cohen, in his new
book, The Mature Mind, highlights exciting new research
that shows that brain cells regenerate, in comparison
with other body cells. Changes in the brain foster
integrative thinking and creative energy in mid-life and
beyond. The rate of disability has dropped, and new
technologies have extended the capacity for community
participation lifelong.
The challenge is to connect capacity with value
through vocation. “Vocation is the place where your deep
gladness and the world’s deep hunger meet,” said
Friedrich Buechner. How can we challenge traditional
expectations, eliminate barriers to ongoing
productivity, and create new opportunities for
meaningful work, paid or unpaid, through the last
breath?
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The
six articles in this issue of Itineraries
describe creative approaches to addressing the challenge
and expanding older adult engagement with meaningful
work.
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The Seven Seeds of Meaningful Work
By Dave Smith
Meaningful work comes alive
With faith in others as well as ourselves.
And that requires Hope…
Meaningful work comes alive
When hope engenders positive change,
And that requires Justice…
Meaningful work comes alive
When justice acts from care and compassion.
And that requires Temperance…
Meaningful work comes alive
When temperance moderates thoughtless greed.
And that requires Prudence…
Meaningful work comes alive
With the prudence of a creative democracy.
And that requires Courage…
Meaningful work comes alive
When purposeful courage fits community
needs.
And that requires Love…
Meaningful work comes alive
With love of others as well as ourselves.
And that requires You and Me.
from To Be of Use (2005)
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The Life Planning Network
is a new community of professionals who provide a
broad spectrum of life planning services and
resources for the Third Age. Meg Newhouse is
the founder of the New England-based network, an
experienced career counselor, and co-author of
Life Planning for the Third Age: A Design and
Resource Guide and Toolkit.
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The InternShop
provides opportunities for midlife interns to try
out vocations that fit their skills and passions
through paid or unpaid internships. Its
founder, Julie Lopp, is an entrepreneur and a
faculty member at the Fairchild Institute in Santa
Barbara, CA.
- In Making a Public Difference, Jim Scheibel, former mayor of St. Paul, MN, and the director of VISTA and the Senior Corps during the Clinton Administration, argues that the best work of one's life may likely be in one's future. The opportunity to give back, to be involved with an issue about which one is passionate, and to leave a legacy can be filled through service.
- Opening Doors for Encore Careers describes the challenge taken on by Civic Ventures to inspire non-profit employers to tap the talent pool of Older Americans. Phyllis Segal, Vice President of Civic Ventures, is directing this effort from Boston, MA.
The Aging Adventurer has published a resource guide to help older adults find ways to follow their hearts. Emily Kimball, founder of Make It Happen!, shows how volunteering, education, and travel adventure qualify as meaningful work.
Work in the Third Age of Life
tells a story about the nature of right livelihood,
to encourage those in the Third Age to do everything
with more attentiveness, gratitude, and joy.
Now based in North Carolina, John Sullivan is
Powell Professor Emeritus at Elon University.
Finally, Barbara Kammerlohr, Second Journey's Book Page editor, reviews three books that complement the articles and show how meaningful work exercises all of the dimensions of wellness: physical, mental, social, emotional, vocational, and spiritual.
We’ve embellished the issue with two especially relevant poems — “The Seven Seeds of Meaningful Work” by Dave Smith and “To Be of Use” by Marge Piercy (below). At the start of most articles, you will also find a brief excerpt from David Whyte's wonderful book on work, Crossing the Unknown Sea: Work as a Pilgrimage of Identity. Its rare mix of poetry, stories from the workplace front (like the one below), Whyte's own unusual take on the industrial revolution, and his account of his personal search for meaning through work will delight you.
— Janet Hively
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“We all have our ground to work. You have yours, too. You just have to find out what it is. But you know what? It is right on the edge of yourself. At the cliff edge of life. That’s the edge you go to. Put yourself in conversation with that edge no matter how frightening it seems. Look down over that edge. It’s a bit terrifying to begin with but then you’ll recognize a bit of territory that you can work, something you can step out onto. It was there all the time for me, when I look back, just on the other side of a too, too familiar window, out of which I had not been looking.”
— David Whyte, Crossing the Unknown Sea:
Work as a Pilgrimage of Identity (Riverhead, 2002) |
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Life Planning for the Third Age
We are on the cusp of a paradigm shift from a deficit model of aging and retirement to a model of continued growth, contribution, and possibility, which features meaningful work as an essential piece.
The time is ripe, and the need is clear... |
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Meg Newhouse is a nationally known pioneer in Third-Age LifeCrafting and a seasoned and gifted group facilitator, teacher, coach, and program designer. |
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The InternShop
Internships? Aren’t they for students and young people?
Not any more! Just as we need new language to describe the Third Age as a new, vital stage of mid and later life, we also need to remodel some of our traditional ways of thinking about working.
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Julie Lopp is an entrepreneur and a faculty member at the Fairchild Institute in Santa Barbara, CA. |
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Making a Public Difference .
...public work should involve something one feels passionate about... It should be work that connects a person to a larger issue [and] the larger fabric of society; it should be an opportunity to interact with diverse groups of people. ... |
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Jim Scheibel, the former Mayor of St. Paul, MN and the former national director of VISTA and Senior Corps, has created Vital Force as an offshoot of the Minnesota Vital Aging Network. |
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Opening Doors for Encore Careers
 Imagine the power that will be harnessed when older adults seeking a new phase of work are connected with social sector organizations that need talent for solving our communities’ most pressing problems. Encore careers are being invented by [those] who want to work in new ways and on new terms... The experience dividend this offers our nation should be good news, [but] capturing it presents challenges as well as opportunities...
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Phyllis Segal, vice president at Civic Ventures, directs the BreakThrough Award program and other initiatives aimed at inspiring and enabling encore careers. |
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To be of use
By Marge Piercy
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The people I love best
jump into work head first
without dallying in the shallows
and swim off with sure strokes almost out of
sight.
They seem to become natives of that element,
the black sleek heads of seals
bouncing like half-submerged balls.
I love people who harness themselves, an ox
to a heavy cart,
who pull like water buffalo, with massive
patience,
who strain in the mud and the muck to move
things forward,
who do what has to be done, again and again.
I want to be with people who submerge
in the task, who go into the fields to
harvest
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and work in a row and pass the bags along,
who stand in the line and haul in their
places,
who are not parlor generals and field
deserters
but move in a common rhythm
when the food must come in or the fire be
put out.
The work of the world is common as mud.
Botched, it smears the hands, crumbles to
dust.
But the thing worth doing well done
has a shape that satisfies, clean and
evident.
Greek amorphas for wine or oil,
Hopi vases that held corn, are put in
museums
but you know they were made to be used.
The pitcher cries for water to carry
and a person for work that is real.
from
Circles in the Water (1982)
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Resources for Following Your Heart
We divided into small groups to discuss a “work” experience we’d had recently that matched our passions and skills and expressed our values. Somewhat sheepishly, I chose to describe a recent Florida bike trip riding from Key Largo to Key West and back... Later I asked Jan, feeling a little guilty about my “work” example, could this really fit under her definition of work... |
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“The Aging Adventurer,” Emily Kimball, is a longtime outdoor enthusiast who takes lessons learned from her adventures and applies them to everyday life. |
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 Work in the Third Age of Life
“Me?” smiled the elder. “Doing?” The elder roared with laughter. “This ego dissolved into God many years ago. There is no ‘I’ left to ‘do’ anything. God works through this body to help and awaken all people and draw them to Him.”... |
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Author-philosopher
John G. Sullivan is a member of the Second Journey Board of Directors and author of Living Large: Transformative Work at the Intersection of Ethics and Spirituality. |
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A Trio of Books on the Changing Nature of Work
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“The afternoon knows what the morning never suspected." — Swedish proverb
LATE EDITIONS! Celebrating Creativity in Later Life
July 13-18, 2008 – Toronto, Canada
 Classical Pursuits sponsors year-round learning vacations for adults who come together to study and discuss great works of literature, art, and music. The 10th anniversary of its flagship program, Toronto Pursuits, will celebrate creativity in later life. From July 13-18, 2008, more than 200 adults from all over the world will gather on the shady campus of the University of Toronto to consider the crowning achievements of, among others, Shakespeare, Eugene O’Neil, Dostoyevsky, Beethoven, Rembrandt, Monet, and Henry Adams, all produced during the latter years in the artists’ lives. The atmosphere is relaxed, informal, and convivial.
For further information or to register, visit classicalpursuits.com.
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Second
Journey, Inc.
4 Wellesley Place, Chapel Hill, NC 27517
(919) 403-0432 |
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SecondJourney@frontier.net |
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Second Journey, Inc. is a 501(c)(3)
tax-exempt nonprofit corporation |
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of
Minnesota's Vital Aging Network, previews
the articles and
offers a rationale for this
special issue of Itineraries
exploring work in
later life.
