Creating Communities for Change
Elder Kockers Unite!
I’ll start this blog about the same place where I’ll end it. Talking about confidence, the future and change. It’s a theme I’ve been exploring through a variety of conversations and coaching sessions this week.
It started with my financial advisor commenting that the people she thought were happiest in life were those who changed the least. The statement took me by surprise, as did my strong reaction to it. Change has been a huge characteristic of both my personal and professional life. I can’t imagine a world without it - it’s embedded into my DNA. I can’t even fathom a yearning for less of it. There are few things I relish as much as a blank page. Or the dopamine injection of the new.
I love this quote from NYT’s David Brooks’ column which my man read out to me over breakfast:
“Confidence. Some people have more of it and some people have less. Confident people have what psychologists call a strong internal locus of control. They believe they have the resources to control their own destiny. They have a bias toward action. They venture into the future.”
My learning from 60+ years of existence is that change is growth. Something to be enabled and embraced. Especially if you are lucky enough to choose change, rather than having it thrust upon you. In love, work, life and relationships, how you navigate change and transition is key to resilience and survival. And because big change is all around, our attitude to it becomes ever more crucial.
In my book Late Love: Mating in Maturity, I explore why people leave or stay in relationships. I wrote about it in terms of love or fear. Do people stay in mediocre or unsatisfying relationships because of something they hold to, or because they are afraid of walking into an uncertain unknown?
The same dynamic plays into our feelings about ageing.
Do You Love or Fear Ageing?
Some people seem to be enjoying this time of life and its new rhythms, motivations and opportunities. Others fear it and track every loss, wrinkle or rejection with fear and horror. The difference is, as Yale’s Becca Levy has documented, hugely impactful. It can be measured in years of life. The age-loving get an extra 7.5 years, on average. A sobering stat for the fearful, which will only add to their fears and lessen their years…
The optimistic look and sound a lot like the Substack writers I convened last Sunday for an introductory chat (pictured above). They are part of the many older folk I follow who are beaming a curious and exploratory light onto what it means to be in your 60s, 70s and 80s these days. They are active (often activists), engaged and optimistic. They are writing, publishing and sharing their experiences of ageing in the 21st century. The good, the bad and the ugly. It’s largely unkown terrain. We’ve never had this many older folk describing this phase of life. It’s real and wonderful, wise and funny in turn. They are part of a rising wave of pioneer elders who will redefine what ageing looks like, and what people do with this period of life.
Jokingly, they baptised the group Elder Kockers, which is Yiddish for something like ‘old fart.’ It is typical of the kind of feisty humour and reality-surfing that is characteristic of later ages. They’ve seen it all, and are alive and kicking and ready to both joke about it and contribute to changing the game - and the world.
If you are a Substack writer focused on ageing, longevity or some related issue and would like to join what will become an informal, monthly get-together among Elder Kockers, do email me.
On the other hand are the fearfuls. Those who worry about the betrayal of the flesh, who focus on the indignities and losses (memory, people, status), and whose lack of planning or purpose often lands them in the hard and lonely land of invisibility or irrelevance.
There are very different sorts of ageing in the world today, and the divide is getting wider all the time. Those with the means and support to design change and find meaning in later life - and those without. Ageing inequality is partly financial, and partly spiritual. The two are cousins.
A coaching client came to a session this week itching for change - but stuck in success. She was looking for permission to let go of work that she’d been successfully doing for years, but that was boring her to death. She was a master of her craft, known for this work and celebrated for it. That makes it hard to drop. It paid well. She carried both the security of a predictable income and the expectations and projections of many admirers and fans. But moving into her desired future required letting go of a success that no longer nourished her. It was scary. Then exhilarating. She felt freed by a decision to change. We can get as boxed in by success as by failure.
We lack the institutional support and programmes to accompany and facilitate midlife transitions. But they are growing. Season 10 of my 4-Quarter Lives podcast, which I’m recording this summer, will engage in conversation with the directors of the world’s leading university midlife programmes, from Harvard and Stanford, to Yale, Cambridge, Oxford and… Singapore! What they are all about how, who they are serving, how people emerge from them…
Change in midlife - or at least an in-depth review of where one has arrived and where you want to head - has been proven to contribute to better health, happiness and even income in the second half of life. See this excellent OECD report for all the data. And all the work that Standard Chartered Life (formerly Phoenix Insights) is doing around the hashtag #CareersCanChange in the UK. Financial advisors (including mine!) will need to get on board. To help plan for and facilitate learning, growth and change - at every age. The old segmentation into overly simplistic phases of ‘accumulation’ and ‘decumulation’ will need more nuanced alternatives.
I’m struck as I listened to the Elder Kocker group how lucky we are to be old at this time in history. Not only because we’ve been a lucky generation who grew up in a time of (relative) global peace and order. But also because we are ageing in a time where we can stay inter-generationally and inter-culturally connected across ages and continents. And share our voices and lessons through a range of communication tools our parents could only have dreamed of.
Part of embracing change is seizing the opportunities and tools on offer - from Substack to AI to the astonishing access to the world’s great thinkers and writers at the drop of a podcast. It’s mind boggling, as well as mind-nourishing, to be able to tap directly into so much good writing and thinking. All available on a podcast or substack near you.
Then the idea is to convene agents of change who can collectively dream up a better future. To build both their confidence and their impact.
And to help keep your eyes on the bigger picture. We are mired in the horror of today’s wars and wacky autocrats. It’s easy to feel that we are going to hell in a rocket. Trying to understand where we are headed, individually and globally, in a period of massive geopolitical change was never going to be easy.
Don’t go it alone. As I wrote last week, support is key. And if you don’t have a support community ready to hand, create it. That’s why I’m convening some Elder Kockers. To help me think and guide me forward into the later decades of life. Communities help you keep your eye on the bigger picture. And inspire you to reflection - and action.
Then the question is do you do it for love - or fear? With confidence or anger?
The articles below reminded me how the forces affecting us all are so much bigger and more world-shaping than our short lives can quite encapsulate. We are living a complete change of geopolitical, technological and demographic reality. I think the world needs its thoughtful elders to step up, weigh in, and help see the bigger picture.
Reading & Recommended: The Bigger Picture (aka China, China, China)
An inspiring article from forever-environmental leader Bill McKibben in the New Yorker on the sudden massive advance of solar power. It’s titled “4.6 Billion Years On, the Sun Is Having a Moment.” Just in the past couple of years, he documents, the tipping point on renewables has hit. But no one has heard about it yet, because a lot of the change is happening in China. “In the past two years,” he writes, “with surprisingly little notice, renewable energy has suddenly become the obvious, mainstream, cost-efficient choice around the world.” If you need a jolt of good news, this is it. Keep your eyes on the bigger picture. And energy is part of it. Or you can read his new book.
China has overtaken the US at the cutting edge of science and innovation. This Economist piece documents the list, from plant biology to superconductor physics. This graph says it all:
Worth reading to digest the above statistics is the NYT’s David Brooks on what this means for the US, and how the current administration is in a race to the bottom.
“It’s not just high-tech manufacturing of things like electric vehicles, drones and solar panels. It’s high-tech everything. In the years between 2003 and 2007, according to a study by the Australian Strategic Policy Institute, the United States led the way in 60 of 64 frontier technologies — stretching across sectors such as defense, space, energy, the environment, computing and biotech. By the period between 2019 and 2023, the Chinese led among 57 of those 64 key technologies, while the United States led in only seven.”
Can you imagine such a fundamental innovation-inversion is such a short amount of time? And the consequences?
And to end on another big change, check out the also-sudden increase of attention and investment in women’s sports. It’s about time! The Economist on The rise and rise of women’s sport and why female athletes “need to leave the men behind.” Amen.
Happy summer folks.
I hope you are contemplating the changes you may want to consider making from the rest and repose of a tranquil summer break. One of the preconditions to good transitions is a well-rested heart and mind. And time invested in considering next steps, in good time, in good company.
I’ve been thinking about this lately (change and community). I love stability and putting down roots, but I don’t like feeling stuck. Using my garden as a metaphor, I cycle through changing seasons, but each season has familiar routines. And sometimes in that cycle of change and familiarity, I can add something new and surprising to keep things interesting.
A new thing I’ve added into my current season is figuring out new rhythms and routines now that I’m entering an “empty nest” phase for the first time! Something as simple and mundane as cooking and grocery shopping differently is sparking a sense of exploration that is giving me joy.
Wow, I adore this post, Avivah - it would be impossible, I believe, for me to be any more aligned with everything you’ve said. In fact, the three core principles in my book, The New Old, are “Be the Boss of Your Life,” “Master Your Mindset,” and “Get Good At Change.” We must have been reading the same pages of the Akashic Records. 😏