Average Reviews:
(More customer reviews)Marc Freedman's book communicates a forward thinking idea that is the next step in social development. Similar to how childhood was reinvented as a valid life stage in the nineteenth century and adolescence in the twentieth century, the new life stage of older retired adults represents the potential for dramatic civic renewal in our time. Those who believe Marc Freedman is advocating for further work after retirement are sorely mistaken and have missed the basic founding premise for his book. He is by no means attempting to guilt trip retirees out of taking a deserved break and rejuvenating themselves with plenty of golf and travel. Marc Freedman points out that the key is to achieve a better balance of work across generations. Our society manages to skew work into a massive time commitment, monopolizing our entire lives for the span of our careers and leaving time for nothing else. People naturally become either absolutely addicted or repelled by the idea of further service. He emphasizes that most people do need to get an R&R fix after working hard for decades but that after a certain amount of relaxation, many older people testify to needing deeper purpose and something to commit to in their retired lives. This empty place in their lives may be best filled through meaningful civic service, perhaps in areas that they had never considered before like mentoring school children or by continuing their lifelong career paths such as the doctors at the Samaritan House Clinic.
Freedman advocates for a revolution of society's attitudes towards older people in order to give them the option of remaining active and contributing to society or not. His heartening message of potential social renewal seeks to "expand opportunities and option, not obligations" and to show what a massive potential resource we have at hand. I found especially inspiring the idea of "the aging of America as an impending civic renaissance."
The book itself is extremely well written, and even if you do not agree with its message, it is worth reading for the first person narratives of older Americans. These are very inspiring and interesting because many of the perspectives are ones that I would never have encountered otherwise and that give me a greater hopefulness for my own ability to continue to affect change in old age.
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