Good morning, Team! It’s Friday!
I’ve been navigating through this mid-life … contemplation (crisis too common, dramatic and overused a term). I’m not a very emotional animal, my self-confidence is in tact (some would suggest too strong) and I’m no longer in “early middle age”. I’m somewhere beyond center of that metric.
What do I plan to do with the rest of my life, leveraging what experience and wisdom I’ve accumulated?
I recently read some hokum article regarding the average age when people stop working “extra hard”, classified as more than 50 hours a week. No surprise that the demographics polled showed the younger people happened to be, the earlier age they considered was THE age to slowdown. Millennials thought 50 was the age you should slow down but boomers thought the age was closer to 60 and retirement had a similar spread.
What does this mean for me?
Every situation is unique. Some have saved enough early to retire or redefine what a work day looked like at a tender age rather than having social security define their cool down date. I just spoke to Carole this past weekend about a couple of her family friends, one who is still singing professionally regularly and another still hauling gravel 6 days a week, both well into their 80’s!
So here are three examples of historic figures who reached their prime at the end of their life, not in the middle.
•Charles Flint orchestrated the consolidation of three companies into the Computing-Tabulating-Recording Company in 1911 at the age of 61; the company became known as International Business Machines in 1924. Flint stayed on the board of IBM, retiring in 1930 when he was 81.
•Peter Drucker lived to be just shy of 96 years of age and worked for over 70 years defining modern management. He wrote 39 books and contributed to the Wall Street Journal for over 10 years and contributed regularly to Harvard Business Review and The Economist.
•Anna Mary Robertson-Grandma Moses began her painting career at age 75 when she couldn’t do needlepoint any more. Instead of retiring, she took up painting and by the time she hit age 101 she’d painted over 1600 pieces!
Each example appears to have lived their lives in crescendo, getting louder and louder as they aged rather than going quietly into the night.
If I got serious about how much, how hard or how long I “had” to work, I could probably eke out a living without being gainfully employed from now until my ticker stopped. The quality would suffer but not from whether I had three squares a day or if I had to sleep in a tent…it would suffer because I wouldn’t be maximizing my purpose. God designed me to fix and solve and reconcile, no matter the stage, the tools or the timeframe.
Yet again I am reminded of the poem “Invictus” by William Ernest Henley
Out of the night that covers me,
Black as the pit from pole to pole,
I thank whatever gods may be
For my unconquerable soul.
Black as the pit from pole to pole,
I thank whatever gods may be
For my unconquerable soul.
In the fell clutch of circumstance
I have not winced nor cried aloud.
Under the bludgeonings of chance
My head is bloody, but unbowed.
Beyond this place of wrath and tears
Looms but the Horror of the shade,
And yet the menace of the years
Finds, and shall find me, unafraid.
It matters not how strait the gate,
How charged with punishments the scroll,
I am the master of my fate:
I am the captain of my soul.
Indeed.
Have a blessed weekend!
Tenacious Cadence 
For all the criticism waged on the British monarchy, they all work and give back until they are unable to do so. Prince Harry, a mere youngster in that clan, has taken the poem to heart and created an ambitious and highly successful endeavor with its name: the Invictus Games.
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