ANOTHER new business card? Seriously?

 

Yep!  Am waiting – none too patiently – for the arrival of yet another new set of business cards.  This makes three ordered over the past two years.  Each one is closer & closer to the mark of what it is I do.

Unlike the first card, which read eldercare anarchist, or eldercare solutionist on the second, there's just a hint of my work with older friends - a small print "the grannie listener," tucked under my name.

What is mentioned, literally front & center, is LIFE EXPANSIONIST, General Instigator.

For many years, my primary use in life was embodying the first.  Now, as I dive deeply into my most joyous life’s work, it is the second.  Being an instigator.

There are a lot of things that call out to be done to help heal our nation’s damaged & damaging culture around aging.  99.99% are NOT things suited to my skill sets/experience.  Seems my role is stirring up the folks best suited to make them happen, to incite them to take the dive into work that will – sweet deal! – ultimately benefit them! 

The fact is the clock is clicking.  We're in a particularly peculiar moment in time, with a culture that's made longevity a driving goal, measuring length of years rather than quality of life.  Big pharma, mammoth health care systems, senior support providers are sittin' pretty on a gold mine.  Beau coup bucks for them, but scarely any interest in funding the work that drives me - helping reconnect our culture to the meaning & purpose of naturally aging.  

 

That’s got to change.  We have to turn around the idea that successful aging means not, that holds as its beau ideal the image of someone in her late seventies still hitting the golf course every day, a man in his early eighties still siring children with his hottie young wife, an elderly couple dashing off at a moment’s notice to some exotic spot.

Reality check:  visit any full-service, senior lifestyle residence for even just a few hours & it’s clear such folks are the rarity.  Most oldsters & elderly are dealing with losing their hearing along with their driver’s license, coming to terms with reduced mobility & loss of independence; doing their best to figure out what to do with the “worry-free,” no responsibilities,  purpose-challenged day stretching before them. 

No medication, exercise program or strategically injected Botox can resolve those difficult realities.  But WE can.  Caring others who realize that there are a lot of low tech, high impact solutions out there, waiting – chomping at the bit – to be discovered.  We can make the difference that’s the promise but rarely the norm at even the swankiest senior lifestyle community. 

This isn’t a wish or a dream – it’s a mega MUST  DO.  Because look around at the masses of older & elderly people enduring lives of quiet – silent – desperation.  Look well, then imagine the future.  Imagine it being you.

Gotta go – a revolution needs some more instigating!