Comment by bell-cot
11 hours ago
> Being 100 and still capable of working is a blessing
A much under-appreciated blessing. At any age.
Over the past half-ish century, I've visited any number of elderly relatives and friends who were living in the US's long-term care facilities. However bright the decor, or kind the care staff - there is a very bleak "people whose ability to do anything useful has died, waiting for the rest of death" aura to them.
Over my life I have learned “you must be useful to be valued” and I’m desperately trying to unlearn it.
Reason one is that I should learn to chill out and relax.
Reason two is that I know old age will hit me very hard once I feel “useless” and I should prepare for that
I've personally had a decent amount of luck with trying to reframe this sort of sentiment from "being useful" to "having purpose".
Right now, yes, its true that a lot of my day to day purpose is driven by participating in the economy and setting myself up for the life I'd like to have in my later years, and I get genuine validation from solving problems and collaborating with people in my day job.
But sometimes, my purpose is to go snowboarding and forget about work. Or to help a friend fix their bicycle. Or to get lost in conversation with a new person I'm dating. As far as any of us know, we only get one turn to be alive on this rock, so we might as well purposefully enjoy it as much as we try to purposefully be useful.
If you look at Ginny Oliver from the article, it might be fair to question whether she was as useful on a lobster boat at 105 as she might have been in her youth. But I doubt she was concerned with usefulness since she had such sense of purpose.
Why not learn how to catch lobsters?
People can be properly useful till their last moment. Caring friend, loving reliable family member - those mean endlessly more than some senior position in some corporation that come and go and with enough distance to see things are mostly meaningless.
You don't need to rewire your core, just look things from right perspective.
Yes. But there is a very long and winding gray spectrum between a belligerently entitled layabout, and "your daily work output no longer excuses your continued consumption of our oxygen, meatbag".