A crisis by any other name...

kw: book reviews, nonfiction, sociology, aging, aging gracefully

When I saw The Third Chapter: Passion, Risk and Adventure in the 25 Years after 50, I snatched it up with high hopes. Having already learned by experience that people tend to experience some kind of self-reinvention about every ten years beginning at age 35, I hoped to learn more of the particular drives, risks, and opportunities that occur at ages around 55 and 65. I hoped to learn why so many are saying "Sixty is the new thirty" and why my experience doesn't square with that Pollyanna-ish assessment. I hoped to find what it is that is unique about "late middle age", for those of us who aren't quite ready to admit to "eldership" yet. Those hopes were only partly realized.

The author, Sara Lawrence-Lightfoot, already at the height of a distinguished career, in her own "third chapter" of life, having eight well-accepted books already published, interviewed forty people of ages between 50 and 75. Considering the number of quotes and references, she must have bounced a lot of this off of her friend, the cultural anthropologist Mary Catherine Bateson.

She states, both early on and in the conclusion, that her forty subjects are all privileged people, and that their experiences may not apply to those who still have to worry where grocery or rent money may come from. Being a person who would most definitely retire if he could afford to, I found that unsettling. Having only recently been able to re-invent my job to better suit my changing (growing?) personality, I'd still prefer a more definite break, a more sweeping revamping of my surroundings.

To avoid the extra-long moniker of "Ms Lawrence-Lightfoot", I'll take the cheeky presumption of using the author's first name. Sara is very thorough in her approach, as any good sociologist ought to be. It is more thorough than I could easily bear. I'd hoped for a forty-fold "Dutch uncle" talk, the words of wisdom distilled from forty lives. What I got was tiny excerpts of what they had to say, longer narratives of their mannerisms and chosen surroundings, and much, much longer disquisitions by Sara. I felt that each snippet was analyzed to death.

Granted, many of the participants found it hard to put into words, the new styles of learning that they had each developed, independently and personally. Each had been driven, often by ennui, to learn new things, accept new challenges, and enter new arenas. Perhaps their "words of wisdom" would have meant little to anyone other than themselves. I still wanted to hear them try, and I didn't.

I suppose there are many readers who will find this book more congenial than I did. It has an undertone, a combination of new-age pseudo-spirituality (or even anti-spirituality) and a fondness for progressive political activism, that I find quite abhorrent. This is coupled with a certain attitude of "Isn't this just to cool!", to which I often replied inwardly, "No, not really."

It would be an oversimplification to aver that Sara's forty subjects are reacting to imminent mortality by attempting to leave some permanent stamp on the world. Though it is certainly true in a few cases, in most there is much more of one or both of these: "I want to experience what I've ignored for the past 30-40 years," and "I may be just one person who can't make that big a difference, but I'll never forgive myself if I don't try." Therefore, the two biggest themes to emerge from their experiences are Art and Political Activism.

I have a couple of, not counter-examples, but sideshows to all this:

• My good friend R—, retired from blue-collar work at age 62 and now 67, is seeking to "find his place" in the Christian community as more than a "consumer". He is at his best in one-on-one situations, and he is living the frustrations of someone with a well-developed White Knight Syndrome who is learning when his help is needed and appreciated and when it is not. He is growing and learning, mostly the hard way, but that's the best way.
• My father, at age 87 firmly into the Fourth Chapter, was a business executive whose employer was bought out and shut down, so he was out of work at age 52. He spent the first half of his Third Chapter in business for himself, and succeeded quite well. He had two passionate hobbies in this forties to his early seventies: painting and the collecting and repair of antique clocks. When my mother needed full-time care, he learned nursing and took care of her until it became too demanding and he had to hire additional help. After she died, he soon found a congenial travel companion, and they married some time ago. I have some of his paintings and clocks; he has given away or sold most of the ones my brothers and I didn't take. He doesn't paint any more, though he is willing to fix a broken clock for a friend. He likes seeing new things, expecially by traveling.
• When we moved away from Oklahoma a decade ago, we lost contact with T—, who married for the first time at age sixty, and had six children by the age of 68. Though at age seventy he looked older than my father does today, he was holding two jobs and always looking for an "angle" for making money: an oilfield venture, or a business to operate. I am told he is still going strong in his early eighties.

All three of these men still have their worries about money. My father is the most well-off of the three, but still rations his travel time, to avoid the "terminal pauperism" of outliving his retirement funds and leaving his wife destitute after his passing. These men only partly fit into Sara's framework. Though she takes a more free approach than other sociologists, seeing more layered experiences and more overlap of "stages", there is still a framework there that fits some people and not others.

What she has produced is an approach to understanding the "later-than-midlife" crises that arrive at ages after fifty. I do know people who match her thesis very well. Many of them partake of various "Institutes of Lifelong Learning" at colleges in the area (particularly the ones that are tuition-free!). Others are busier with their "retirement" than they were when at work, learning by sweating, so to speak.

Being nearly twelve years into my Third Chapter, where do I fit in, if at all? I'd like to retire, and I was close to doing so when the current economic troubles began. My ideal retirement situation? First, half-time work either as a science instructor at a junior college, or gathering more music students, particularly if I can attract intermediate students who want to learn the folk genres in which I specialize. That could pay enough of the bills that I wouldn't need to "hit" my IRA and 401K. The other half of the time, I dream of seeing all of America's national parks (that includes Canada, at least). I'd probably find it rather fun to participate in a Lifelong Learning program, maybe as both a learner and a teacher, which many do. I've carried on private studies in subjects of my own quirky interest since my forties. Taking actual courses in some of them is an attractive option.

What are we to do with the third chapter of our lives? Far from dropping old passions and moldering in a rocking chair, we are most likely to trade new passions for old, to learn because it is fun to learn, and to restore those corners of ourselves that we've neglected because we were "making a living". If some want to get back out there and "change the world" some more, that is worth a try. For me, if I change myself, the change in me will change others. That's good enough.