No Pity Party for Seniors: Going over the Hill Can Mean a Super Second Life
Ventura Star, April 11, 2005
By Terry Paulson, PhD

The year of my 60th birthday is before me. Like others, everyone talks about the proverbial hill in the distance. Will there be another "up" on the other side or, as they warn, will it be downhill from there? After all, there are signs that are hard to ignore. I'm now taking medications for the 'remainder of my life," and the old body can't do some of the things it used to do effortlessly. The face in my mirror doesn't quite match the playful soul within. Yes! Those old people I see at my high school reunion went to school with ME!

And now, everyone seems to be writing about the demise of Social Security. After reading my latest issue of the AARP Bulletin, they would have me believe that my very future depends upon their efforts to protect the benefits of senior citizens from the onslaught of Bush's call for small, voluntary investment accounts that people can actually own!

AARP is one advocacy group that loves to speak for its members but refuses to give them a true chance to express their own voices in disagreement. I have a feeling they like taking care of dependent and obedient seniors!

The AARP better get ready for some different kind of seniors. The Boomers are coming, and few want to go silently into the night. They want no AARP senior pity party! Boomers are not done working, dreaming or living. And they don't want to sacrifice their grandchildren's future retirement options by locking them into a failing Social Security program.

Yes, failing! When they created Social Security to provide for minimal funds at 65, the average life expectancy was 58. What a stroke of government genius-You pay into a plan for years and die 7 years before you ever get to benefit! Now the life expectancy is in the high seventies with some geneticists suggesting that a child born in 2000 might have a life expectancy of 140. Now, if you retire at 65, that's a lot of golf!

No matter what they decide in Washington, Americans are living longer and they want to sustain a better quality of life. It's time we stop playing victims and start inventing a new vision for aging.

Some are already living vital lives well into their 90's. At the Pepperdine University's Youth Citizenship Seminar, Art Linkletter inspired young and old alike. He shared his passion for China is a new land of opportunity. He's started a new company in China to provide solar power in remote areas. At 93, Art Linkletter is still dreaming dreams and living them!

Art Linkletter is not alone. The fastest growing segment of our population in terms of percentage growth is the 90 to 100 age range. An LA Times study found that 3% of Americans in the 90-100 age range are still working full time. Twelve hundred of them were physicians! Now, I don't know if I would go to a doctor who was 100-"OK, we'll start with blood letting and then move on to something more modern!" Seriously, these senior dynamos don't have to work; they work because they want to. Work continues to fuel their life force, and they still have much to offer.

Right now, with Social Security in trouble, some corporate benefit plans failing and healthcare insurance tied to employment or government handouts, many Americans are locked in jobs they hate. They can't afford to quit and their dreams are turning into nightmares. Let's change the paradigm. Let Americans own part of their Social Security funds, their benefit plans and their healthcare policies so they would be free to chart their own future.

Let's challenge schools and companies to keep aging Americans productive. Most seniors have no desire to work full time, but many would love to keep their skills current and work three to six months a year on projects that would allow them to make a difference. Instead of fighting change, AARP ought to be helping seniors find new dreams by keeping them learning, laughing, living, achieving and earning wealth.

There was a brief scene in "Finding Neverland," my sentimental Oscar pick for Best Picture, where an admiring patron complimented the playwright J. M. Barrie after experiencing Peter Pan. She commented about how her departed husband would have appreciated the play: "He would have loved it-the pirates and the Indians. After all, he was just a boy. He was just a boy to the very end."

Like many Boomers, I want no AARP pity party. Instead of helping seniors slide into dependency, help us find new ways to live a super second life and free more and more Americans to control their own futures. After all, as a "boy to the very end," I see a few more hills I want to climb!

Dr. Terry Paulson is a psychologist, speaker and author of The Dinner: The Political Conversation Your Mother Told You Never to Have

—May we never forget how truly blessed we are!