What do you think about your
future? Seniors are more apt to think
about what they are leaving to their children and their grandchildren than they
are about themselves. This is certainly understandable, but let’s look a little
closer to home. What about your future?
I read an article by Verne
Wheelwright in an issue of The Futurist (www.wfs.org/futurist) magazine (Nov/Dec
2010) and it had more food for thought than I would have imagined. The article “strategies for living a very
long life” were projections into the future but not in a science fiction sense. Believe it or not, the future is right now. The
article took a peek not only at what is ahead, but at what is happening right
now.
People are living longer and are healthier than they were a very short
time ago. Advances in science and medicine are
predicting that these numbers are going to increase both quality of life and
life expectancy in the immediate future.
What do these predictions and statistics mean to you?
Seniors have had a tendency
not to plan very far into the future. They
have always figured that they didn’t have much time left so it really didn’t
concern them. However, times are changing
rapidly, and our future is about to become more complicated
This future is already happening, so don’t scoff and think that this
doesn’t apply to you. Planning for old
age takes on a whole new meaning if you have to plan for 10 or 20 more years
than you had anticipated.
What would it mean to you if
you were told that you might live more than 100 years and still be in good
health? How would that change your life
today? What will you do to keep your
life interesting? What would you do
differently if you thought that your retirement years would be calculated in
decades rather than a few years? Will
you be happy with the way your life plays out? Would simply being alive and healthy be
enough?
I worked with seniors for many years and most of them
were in awe of the fact that they were still alive and in better shape than
they thought possible. They all said
that if they would have known that they were going to live so long they would
have done things differently. What would you do differently? I would like to
examine these thoughts over the next few weeks (input welcome) about what
strategies you would use to ensure a good life? Thank you to The Futurist magazine for
reminding us that we still do have a future.
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