Ruth Finkelstein of the Robert N. Butler Columbia Aging Center said, “One dose of education that at you get in the first 20 years of your life simply couldn’t be adequate for the next 90 years. It’s preposterous on its face.”
We don’t even slack in our pace of work to care for our families or our parents, or if we do, we do it under enormous pressure. Wouldn’t it be helpful if we had the help of the younger and the older generation at the time? What I’m talking is the relationship between all these things.
Then consider what happens when we retire after 60: “The data about the effect of a 30 year vacation is shockingly clear. None of us have the resources to amuse ourselves fully and sufficiently for thirty years with no framework, and no structure.”
You go from this time when you know what to do, to a time when that is not available to you. And you are defined by its absence. Not surprisingly, you go into an emotional decline, a physical decline and a cognitive decline.