A Life Worth Living
In The 100-Year Life Lynda Gratton and Andrew J. Scott, seek to answer the question, “What happens if we live to 1oo?”
This text is critical in understanding the shift we are experiencing in our Western society, as people are working longer and young adults are delaying decisions like careers, marriage, or children, disconnecting “age from stage” and changing how we see our life in stages as a whole. Gratton and Scott’s combo as psychologists and economists add a compelling mixture to the components of this concept that allows different people from multiple backgrounds to engage with this text.
I was drawn especially to the question they ask on page sixteen, “Rather than ask what your 20-year-old-self would think of you today, we invite you to think about what your 70, 80, or 100 year-old-self would think of you now.”[1] In an interview about the book, Lynda Gratton shared that, “Change will happen at the level of the individual.”[2] This book has been especially timely in three areas of my life and work. The first I will address is my personal and family life, then my work as a local church pastor, and finely in relationship to my NPO on “Sabbath for Everyone”.
As an individual whose primary strengths in the StrengthsFinder assessment are “Strategic” and “Futuristic”, I love the idea of thinking ahead to the different stages of my life. In each stage of my life, I want to be a kingdom-minded individual who is living and loving well the people entrusted to my care, whether it’s my family or people in the ministries I have the privilege of leading. I hope that I’m not leading the same way in my church now as I am when 70, but that I have continued to raise up people over the next 20 years to lead alongside and learn from. Our family is also prayerfully considering adopting a little boy that we’ve had since birth in the foster care system. This would make 5 total kids for us, three biological kids who are teenagers and another adopted daughter who is currently 3 years old. My wife astutely noted that if we say yes to adopting this little boy, we will be 59 years old when he graduates high school. This reality has caused us to think deeply about what sort of recreation we want to spend our lives on in the next twenty years. In addition to this consideration, it is important to me that we continue to cultivate healthy practices like diet and exercise, as well as healthy financial practices like saving and self-control so that we can experience a life worth living in the stages ahead. This book will be a great conversation starter for reflections with my wife and my coach in the season ahead.
The second reality this book intersects with is my local church as one of the pastors. Our church is multi-generational, which means we have people entering the “empty-nester” and “retirement” stage of life in the traditional three-stage life but are wrestling with meaning and purpose beyond what they’ve been sold in our consumeristic society that retirement is supposed to be. They long to continue to make a difference for the kingdom of God and invest in people and projects that they care about. However, they also enjoy traveling and being free from any ongoing commitments. This has changed the landscape of how we view engagement in the life of the church, volunteer roles, and relationships. It has made it challenging at times to build momentum in certain ministries in our church with what can feel like sporadic engagement from a core demographic in our church. However, reading The 100 year life has helped me develop a deeper reservoir of compassion for people who are navigating a changing reality when it comes to work and play. While I believe I can still invite them to meaningful engagement and service in the life of our church and community, I need to be open-handed about what that commitment might look like.
The final area of intersection for this book is related to the study of my NPO and “Sabbath for Everyone”. As I examine the problem of people who desire to practice Sabbath or weekly rest but struggle to do so, this book has insightfully identified one of the challenges of practicing rest in our twenty-first-century world. In their chapter, “Time”, they discuss the theory of the income effect developed by Keynes that asserts that people would have extra leisure time as prosperity grew. While this has happened to some degree, Gratton and Scott observe that “what Keynes underestimated was the development of consumerism in the twentieth century…it turned out what people wanted was material possession and they wanted these a great deal more than they wanted leisure time.”[3] This observation has helped me identify one of the main undercurrents that have made practicing a time of weekly rest and play such a challenge in the Western World in the 21st century. Dealing with the reality of consumerism, desire for material possessions, and how they influence how we see ourselves and the world around us will be important as I design a plan to address the problem of lack of meaningful rest and Sabbath practice in many of our churches and lives today.
While this book may only have one core idea and is simply asserted, I think this text will be invaluable in helping me and the people around me think more deeply about cultivating a life worth living for in the years and decades to come. I look forward to reading the stories of people who are restructuring to live well for 100 years on the book’s website[4] and hopefully, someday, adding my own story of a life well lived.
[1] Gratton and Scott, The 100 Year Life, page 16.
[2] Lynda Gratton: The 100-Year Life – YouTube
[3] Gratton, Scott. The 100 Year Life, page 230.
[4] Your Stories – The 100-Year Life (100yearlife.com)
About the Author
Ryan Thorson
Follower of Jesus. Husband. Father. Pastor. Coach. I am passionate about helping people discover the gift of Sabbath and slow down spirituality in the context of our busy world.9 responses to “A Life Worth Living”
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Hi Ryan,
In your experience or observation, in what ways does a multi-generational church community impact the approach to volunteer roles and relationships within the church?
Great question Shela. We have to have realistic expectations about the way people can be involved in our ministries based on the lifestage they are in. While some might have more energy, they have less availability. Others have lots of time but not as much energy. We try to invite and empower rather than recruit and require.
Hi Ryan, I like how you are thinking that you would help to be leading differently when you are older. However, you peaked my curiosity. What would your 70,80, or 100 year old self say about the life you are leading right now? Peace.
Great question Diane. I think that version of myself would say, “relax and enjoy your kids!”
Ryan! Hey there. I appreciated how you looked at your life’s journey and measured things. You and your wife also get significant props for raising that young man. As you spoke of your NPO in correlation with the reading, I wondered if there are any statistics you have come across where people who engaged in the Sabbath lived longer and/or healthier lives?
Ryan, you identified three areas of your life to discuss in this post: personal and family life; work as a pastor; relationship to your NPO.
Where do you see these three overlapping? What sorts of fruit do you anticipate from this overlap? What sorts of leadership challenges and opportunities can you see from the invitation of the book (to plan for a longer life)?
Hi Ryan – thanks for your honest reflections.
What feelings are associated with being 59 upon your foster son’s graduation? I am curious if those feelings are more about being 59 or being XX years away from health/well being/death. If you knew you’d live to 100, would you feel any different?
Thanks for your work on the Sabbath. It’s a critical component of flourishing and sustaining for the long haul!
Hi Ryan,
I was looking forward to hearing your thoughts on the 100-year life and the implications of Sabbath. Thanks for not disappointing! I am curious how you would differentiate the difference between “leisure time” and Sabbath rest.
Hi Ryan, I appreciated your thoughts on pastoring a multi-generational church. I have been thinking a lot about the three-stage life and the challenge for pastors to lead churches into a more multi-stage reality. How do you think pastors can encourage older congregants to not sell themselves short concerning their impact within the local church?