Aging

At the airport recently, I heard a little piece of what I would consider unintended ageism passed on from a mother to her six-year-old daughter.

Ken Dychtwald has been my “modern elder” for a couple of decades since I got to know him as a fellow Esalen Institute donor and all-around cool dude. How many hipsters in their twenties in the 1970s decided to explore aging and longevity as a career? Not many, but Ken has always been ahead of the curve, creating Age Wave long ago. For a half-century, he’s been offering the world all kinds of interesting data to back up the socio-demographic changes we’re seeing around aging.

Ever since I wrote this post last month, “Older Single Women of the World, Unite,” (meawisdom.com/wisdom-well/post/older-single-women-of-the-world-unite) I’ve been in a series of separate email conversations with more than a dozen single female MEA alums who are curious about their definition of family as they age.

“When you cannot do what you’ve always done, you do what matters most.” Robert D. Hales

While in Europe, I eavesdropped on conversations about Joe Biden. In the course of an hour, I heard an Aussie say that Biden has been a successful President "in spite of" his age and a German saying he was successful "because of" his age.

The data is daunting.

In the past, I’ve suggested that our body is a rental car we were issued at birth. While we didn’t get any choice in the color or model, we do have some control over how we drive and maintain the vehicle.

Global aging and technology innovation are each occurring at an unprecedented rate. The intersection of these two global macro trends creates significant need and opportunity for new products and services to transform and tech-enable the aging experience.

We’ve all heard the quote, “There’s a reason your windshield is bigger than your rearview mirror; where you’re headed is more important than what you’ve left behind.

At 26, the world was my oyster. To be explored with bluster and boister.