What Color Is Your Parachute? (38 page)

All in all, your age is irrelevant if you convey energy and enthusiasm—for Life, for work, for helping others. Energy. That’s what every employer is looking for, when they interview someone over 50.

The nicest compliment any of us can hear people say about us, as we grow older, is: “What a passion for life she still has! Or,
he
has! It’s thrilling to be around them.”

By the time we reach the Fourth Movement of our lives, the life of the mind is
everything.

Sometimes our mind has become puzzling to us in its performance: we experience more short-term memory loss, more inability to concentrate sometimes, more difficulty retrieving words, more difficulty than
before, in recognizing faces or remembering names of neighbors, more things becoming “lost,” or at least misplaced, at inopportune times, or an increasing inability to follow through on tasks, becoming instead easily distracted or diverted. Or the inability any longer to push ourselves to the limit, as we used to do.

These things can occur when we are young, but they tend to disturb us more when they come in the Fourth Movement of our lives. Oh,
aging
, we think.
Darn!

Well, not necessarily. The causes are sometimes medicines we are taking—especially for pain or nausea; or abrupt menopause (in women, of course); or anxiety or depression; or medical treatment we have undergone in the past (particularly chemotherapy, in 15 percent of those thus treated—a condition called “chemo brain”); and the largest reason of all for these new behaviors or limits: “I don’t know.”

Sometimes we obsess. About anything. About everything.

This is a matter of choosing what to think about.

By the Fourth Movement, we’ve experienced enough injustices, unfairnesses, and psychic injuries, to ourselves or to the vast and vulnerable peoples of the Earth, that we could
brood about
these things, for the rest of our lives. If we so choose.

Again, by then, we’ve seen enough possible, fearful scenarios for the future of our own lives, and how we shall die, for the future of our people, and for the future of the Earth, that we can live in constant daily fear of a thousand things that will never happen, for the rest of our lives. If we so choose.

Again, by then we’ve seen the wondrous beauty of the world, in our garden, in the sunset, in music, in a thousand unexpected kindnesses from strangers and loved ones, and in the enchanting spirit of the best people on Earth, that we could think on these things, for the rest of our lives. If we so choose.

Yes, more important than
the life that we choose
, are the thoughts that we choose, day after day after day. They determine the quality of life for us in the Fourth Movement of our lives.

I think that
The Secret
—so popular back in 2007—had it right, at its core, even though the melodramatic story and hints of conspiracy in its
presentation
of that core, are more than a little off-putting to some.

The Will is a metaphor for
the Power of deciding,
which each of us has. We are most familiar with it when we are dieting, or making New Year’s resolutions. It often feels like a battlefield, between two opposing impulses: should I eat chocolate? or, should I not eat chocolate?

But in the Fourth Movement of our lives, it is often a larger battlefield, between our diminishing power to decide, and a vast number of crooks, out there, who want to separate us from our money, by false pretense and luring promises that they will make us rich, if only we…

So, the Fourth Movement is a great time to relearn, or learn for the first time,
how to decide.

I mentioned, at the beginning of this book, that this is one of the skills you would
think
school would help us master; but, alas and alack! more often than not, it does not. So, we must pick up clues, wherever we can.

Dr. Jerome Groopman, a hematologist,
⁵
wanted to study
How Doctors Think.
In a brilliant book with that title, published in 2007, he presented his findings. On average, he discovered, a physician will interrupt a patient describing her symptoms
within eighteen seconds
. By then, often, the doctor has decided what the diagnosis is—often correctly, but sometimes disastrously wrong.

In illuminating how doctors (and we) can make better decisions about our medical treatment, Dr. Groopman illuminates how
we
can make better decisions about
everything.
Crucial knowledge for those of us over 50.

It is a marvelous book, which I highly recommend. For our purposes, I am summarizing, here, my own learnings about the steps that Dr. Groopman says a doctor (or we, the patient) should take, before making a decision (or diagnosis):

1. Take time. Hurry is the worst enemy of good decisions.
   

2. Question.
   Cogently
   . Listen.
   Carefully
   . Observe.
   Keenly
   . Think.
   Differently
   . Questions that will help:
   

   Ask yourself if there is some vital piece of information that is being left out.
   Physician to patient: “Tell me the story again, as
   if I’d never heard it: what you felt, what else you remember about where and when, etc.”
   

   Ask what else we should explore to avoid premature closure.
   “What else could this possibly be?” Physician: Don’t be influenced by how many physicians have previously examined and diagnosed this patient, or what their diagnosis is. This person has come to you because they want to hear something new, not just a reinforcement of what other doctors have said. Bring a fresh mind with the question foremost in your head: “But what if this isn’t what others have said it is? What if this is something very different?”
   

   Don’t just dismiss the intuitions and feelings of patient or family.
   Physician to patient: “What are your worst fears, or your family’s worst fears, about these symptoms?”
   

   Recheck the initial diagnosis.
   “In the tests, or in the diagnosis, is there anything that doesn’t fit?”
   

   Avoid one-answer solutions to complex problems.
   Patient to physician: “Is it possible I have more than one problem?”
   

If you need or want to work past 50, there are some things you need to keep in mind: you have—or should have, if you stop to think about it—lots of contacts, individuals or networks of friends. In a word,
a grapevine.
They can lead you to jobs, they can speak enthusiastically about you. And since, by your age, these contacts are likely to be of all ages, you have a rich pool to pick from. Unlike younger workers.

To find more information, go to
www.jobfinderssupport.com/resources.htm
and then, under “Hot Topics” click on “Secrets of Finding a Job When You’re Over 50.”

To find jobs that may offer flextime, job-sharing, or telecommuting to either full- or part-time workers, see:

• A List of Part-Time Jobs Available in Your Area (Zip Code):
  www.snagajob.com
  

Past 50, many of us think more strongly about what we believe—about the afterlife, about God, prayer, etc. There is a website that deals with
news, etc., about all faiths, which you may want to look at:
www.beliefnet.com
.

Then there is a Jesuit site that leads you in a daily meditation for ten or more minutes (in more than twenty languages with a visual, but otherwise no sound or distraction):
http://sacredspace.ie
.

There is also a site that gives you a daily podcast of church bells, music, Scripture reading, and meditations or homily, with no visuals, but with sound, and an audio MP3 file that can be sent to your phone, computer, PDA, etc:
www.pray-as-you-go.org
.

A site dedicated to helping you keep a divine consciousness 24-7: by helping you link up to other people of faith, through prayer circles, sharing of personal stories of faith, etc., aimed especially, but not exclusively, toward young adults. Its ultimate message: you are not alone:
www.24-7prayer.com/articles/771
.

Lastly, a site dedicated to helping you find a spiritual counselor (or “spiritual director”), as well as retreat centers, in the Christian, Islamic, Buddhist, Jewish, or Interfaith faiths:
www.sdiworld.org
.

If your spirituality isn’t of the traditional kind, at least get out in the outdoors as much as possible. Sit. Walk. Breathe. Observe. Get excited by the simple beauty of just being alive.