{"id":38246,"date":"2024-10-07T10:30:49","date_gmt":"2024-10-07T17:30:49","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/?p=38246"},"modified":"2024-09-07T15:06:58","modified_gmt":"2024-09-07T22:06:58","slug":"one-hundred-years-of-solitude","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/one-hundred-years-of-solitude\/","title":{"rendered":"One Hundred Years of Solitude"},"content":{"rendered":"

In their book The 100-Year Life: Living and Working in an Age of Longevity<\/em>, authors Lynda Gratton and Andrew Scott point out the recent significant increase in human longevity and they suggest that the change in life expectancy should also adjust how we approach preparing for\u2014and living\u2014our lives. They contend that because many of us have the possibility of living into our 100\u2019s, we (especially rising generations) should reconsider the conventional wisdom surrounding education, preparing for our careers, working, and planning for and taking retirement.<\/p>\n

As a man-of-a-certain-age (55), this book inspired me, frustrated me, and raised a concern.<\/p>\n

The inspiration<\/strong> came from my takeaways for my kids and the young adult leaders that I disciple. Gratton and Scott suggest that to flourish in a multistage life, people should pursue lifelong learning, embrace greater flexibility in their careers, and approach retirement from a different angle than has been generally accepted for generations.<\/p>\n

This is all great news for someone in their teens, twenties, and thirties. Instead of a linear model of life development that\u2019s been the norm for years (ie: graduate high school, go to university, get an entry level job, work your way up, save for a home and retirement, etc.,), a 100-year life calls for more flexibility, greater creativity, and an increased importance placed on \u201cthe intangibles\u201d like peers, reputation, and balanced living.<\/p>\n

Even with our old models of a 70-to-80-year-lifespan, I\u2019ve long been an advocate for young adults traveling, taking gap years, serving on mission, and exploring the world with curiosity and wonder, making friends, and having experiences in places they never would have had they stuck with a linear plan. In many ways the suggestions in this book are supporting what I\u2019ve been encouraging young people to do, anyways (so, perhaps I will gift this book to parents who still see the world through a 70-year lens).<\/p>\n

Beyond life-planning takeaways for those I work with, this book provides some great resources for my NPO project, which is a a small book on intergenerational leadership partnerships in our church.<\/p>\n

The 100-Year Life gives significant weight to relationships for a rising generation\u2019s success: Both professional relationships (the \u201cposse\u201d of close collaborators that increases professional social capital[1]), as well as friendships that can provide \u201cregenerative community.\u201d[2] While one might assume that those relationships are limited to age-group peers, I would argue that cross-generational support is a \u2018secret sauce\u2019 that can help open doors for an accelerated trajectory of influence and authority.<\/p>\n

Another important observation I want to mention was the need for a person to invest, as early as possible, in a good reputation that will pay social and occupational dividends later.[3] For younger leaders who might someday shepherd the church, cultivating a healthy reputation with both their peers and older leaders will pay off in the future.<\/p>\n

My frustration<\/strong> with the book is really an annoyance with myself. I did travel, explore, and build a diverse relationship network when I was younger, and I have adapted my career and learning path to take advantage of many opportunities, However, I feel like in some ways taking full advantage of the advice given in this book is a ship that has sailed for me. Had I read this book when I was in my 20\u2019s I think I might have felt more freedom to take Robert Frosts\u2019s \u201croad less traveled.\u201d Since reading this book I\u2019ve told more than one person \u201cI wish this would have been written in the 80s.\u201d<\/p>\n

However, the fact that I am earning a doctorate at 55, and embrace multiple streams of service to my church, community, and denomination gives me some hope that my future is still full of wonder and opportunity. That even as I intend to stay in my primary role until my early 70s, that \u2018retirement\u2019 beyond that point can be full of meaningful Kingdom contributions for as long as I live and have the capacity to serve others.<\/p>\n

Finally, a cautionary connection<\/strong>. In the novel One Hundred Years of Solitude by Gabriel Garcia Marquez, a man starts an insular utopian city that 7 generations of his family populate. In the end (after 100 years), both the city, and family, are destroyed. As humans increase our lifespans to and past 100, it\u2019s tempting to think that we have so much more time to build something more meaningful, but Scripture teaches us that to have a heart of wisdom we must number our days rightly (Psalm 90:12). This isn\u2019t just challenging us to count our years numerically and plan accordingly, but to also consider how every moment of our allotted time can align with God\u2019s purposes in our world.<\/p>\n

Because no matter how many years we have where we can build a bigger life, in the end anything we construct that isn\u2019t eternal will burn to the ground anyways.<\/p>\n

[1] Lynda Gratton & Andrew J. Scott. The 100-Year Life<\/em>. Bloomsbury Publishing, London, 2017, 100.<\/p>\n

[2] Gratton & Scott. The 100-Year Life<\/em>. 109.<\/p>\n

[3] Gratton & Scott. The 100-Year Life<\/em>. 101.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

In their book The 100-Year Life: Living and Working in an Age of Longevity, authors Lynda Gratton and Andrew Scott point out the recent significant increase in human longevity and they suggest that the change in life expectancy should also adjust how we approach preparing for\u2014and living\u2014our lives. They contend that because many of us […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":169,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[2489,3205],"class_list":["post-38246","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-dlgp02","tag-gratton","cohort-dlgp02"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/38246","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/169"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=38246"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/38246\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":38248,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/38246\/revisions\/38248"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=38246"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=38246"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=38246"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}