Ageing

Retiring at 100

No thanks!

According to John Beard, director of the World Health Organisation’s Department of Ageing and Life Course, we could soon see people working up to the age of 100. I have no idea if I’ll still be alive at 100 but I do know that I won’t still be working. I’m hoping that if I do reach that age I’ll still be healthy and active but I think by that time I’ll be happy to let someone else have a turn at working.

“Ageing is too often portrayed as a burden on society,” he said before the Global Federation on Ageing conference opened in Melbourne on Monday.

“Sure, there will be impacts on health service delivery and pensions, but society overlooks the skills and experiences of older people.

“By marginalising them, we force them to become dependent on younger generations.”

Mr Beard, an Australian based in Geneva, envisions an older generation that is plugged in to the latest technology as people in their 80s and 90s choose to stay at work. – News.com.au

Apparently only 20 percent of retirees surveyed in a recent US study are happy about their life of leisure, saying that they’d prefer to still be working.

I know that many people say that they’d get Bored if they retired but I think they just lack imagination. I’m sure that I’ll find plenty to do when I retire. There are plenty of activities to keep me busy and more than enough good causes that could do with some help. I don’t see retirement as a chance to sit back and do nothing but an opportunity to change focus and gain more control over what I’m able to put my efforts into.

What about you? Would you want to work until you’re 100? What age do you think you’ll retire? What will you do with your retirement years?

I’d love to get your thoughts. Please leave a few lines in the comments section of this post.

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You haven’t aged a bit

Jan 7th, 2010

by Rodney Olsen.

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Time may move on relentlessy but I noticed something interesting this morning. My mind refuses to keep up with the times and it’s not necessarily a bad thing.

A friend of mine posted a couple of recent photos on Facebook. I haven’t caught up with him for many years but when I looked at his photos they looked just like him, and to be more specific, they looked just like him from around twenty five years ago when I first got to know him.

I can see that he’s aged but I still see the guy I knew all those years ago. I don’t think of him as a guy in his twenties but that’s what I’m seeing.

It seems to be the case with anyone I meet that I’ve known a long time. I always see them physically as the person I first got to know rather than the person they are now.

I see middle aged people that to my eyes look like twenty year olds. If I met them for the first time today I’m sure I’d see them very differently.

Do you find the same thing? Sure, you can tell that someone’s got a bit older. Less hair and what’s there is looking decidedly gray but they still look like the person you’ve always known?

My only hope is that people I’ve known for decades see me that way too.

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Advice for the child I was

Jun 1st, 2009

by Rodney Olsen.

4 comments

I’m not really sure when this photo was taken but I know it was well over 40 years ago. It’s me when I was just a few years old, before I learned so many of life’s lessons.

As I look into the face of that happy, innocent child, I wonder what advice I would give him. If I could go back to the mid-sixties and give my ‘young self’ some life advice, what would I say?

I think I’d tell him not to worry about the small stuff so much. I’d also tell him to cultivate a strong reading habit.

Some of my strongest advice would be in the area of faith. I’d recommend that he stay as close to God as he could and to learn how to lean on him through the good and the hard times.

I’d tell him to make the most of his relationship with his mother because he’d only have her around until his early twenties. (Thankfully I did have a great relationship with mum, but she still passed away far too soon.)

One of the things I’d be sure to say is to make sure you take lots of risks. Not reckless risks that would endanger him or others, but risks that ensure that he didn’t ever wonder ‘what would have happened if only ….’.

I’d tell him to treasure every relationship.

I’m sure that there would be plenty to tell that young boy. There are lessons that I’ve had to learn the hard way that would have been easier if someone had the right words to say back then.

Overall, I don’t have many regrets but I certainly wouldn’t want to go back and do it all over again. I’ve had a pretty good life so far and while it’s likely that I’ve passed the half way mark already, I still feel as if life is just beginning in some ways. I’m also finding that a lot of the advice that I would give that young boy is the kind of advice that I’m giving or need to give to the two young lives God has entrusted to me now.

If you could go back and give some advice to yourself when you were very young, what would you say?