Having just wrapped up the writing of a long piece for the Global Wellness Institute (GWI) on the future of age and work, I have been thinking a lot about the idea of age. Is age just a number that doesn’t matter to anyone anymore? The answer is both yes and no. On the one hand, there is a cohort of people living longer and healthier today than ever in history. On the other hand, we can not be pollyannaish about the effects of age on our bodies. Around 30% of people over 80 are thought to have some sort of cognitive impairment. Pre-1880s, age was not a data point that mattered much. One could either do a task or not. This led to Dickensian child labor working conditions, which were then legislated away with age-based child labor laws. Then came Social Security, another age-based legislated mandate. Forced age-based retirement seems like a terrible idea, but then having people in positions of authority while in cognitive decline seems equally bad.
Age does matter. Yes, it is just a number, but it is still a very important number. For some people, 60 may be the new 40, or, as Dr. Mike Roizen has told us, 90 will become the new 40. For others, 90 is just 90, with all the associated health concerns. We do, however, have agency here; the actions we take today do matter, and if we are consistent, they will have a big impact on what that 90 could look like. But just because we do all the right stuff does not mean bad things won’t happen. They do, but we can still proceed on a daily basis as if the future is bright. Remember: Optimists live longer and healthier than pessimists.
At 66, I am not 40. My left knee has taken some considerable wear, I can’t run like I used to, but I also have another 26 years under my belt which gives me a much better understanding of complex situations than I did then. One of the more interesting things we discovered in the course of doing the GWI paper was the idea of a workable cultural range, which seems around 20 years up and down. There are always exceptions here, but it seems that 20 years is about the end limit of how far down a person can reasonably manage a co-worker and also for the co-worker to identify with the manager. We see things through the culture we were born into. This isn’t a hard and fast rule, but it seems that most 60-year-olds would rather not manage a 25-year-old. It seems that they would, however, enjoy using their accumulated skill sets in skill-directed work, just not management. So, age matters physically, but mostly in the images and qualities we associate with it—for better or worse. We get to choose.
Onward and upward,
David
