Life’s Third Age
Dr. Ken Dychtwald, Psychologist, Gerontologist, Author of 18 Books

Excerpted from Radical Curiosity: One Man’s Search for Cosmic Magic and a Purposeful Life by Ken Dychtwald PhD (reprinted with permission, Unnamed Press April, 2021).

A new stage of life has been emerging, the “third age,” a concept borrowed from the European tradition of adult education. In life’s first age, from birth to approximately thirty, the primary tasks of men and women center on biological development, learning, partnering, and procreating. During the early years of human history, the average life expectancy of most people wasn't much higher than the end of the first age, and as a result the entire thrust of society was oriented toward these most basic drives. In the second age, from about thirty to sixty, the concerns of adult life focus on the formation of family, child-rearing, and productive work. Until the last century, most people couldn’t expect to live much beyond the second age, and society was centered on the concerns of this age.

With our longer lives, and the coming of the boomer age wave, a new era is unfolding, the third age, which brings new freedoms, new responsibilities and new purposes to adulthood. First, with the children grown and many of life’s basic adult tasks either well under way or already accomplished, this period allows the further development of emotional maturity, wisdom, and one’s own personal sense of purpose. The third age has another appealing dimension: there’s an abundance of free time and opportunity to try new things—and to contribute to society in new ways. In the next twenty years, boomer third agers will have 2.5 trillion hours of leisure time to fill. I’ve noticed that there’s a lot of confusion among many retirees regarding what they should be doing with their free time. Last year the average American retiree watched forty-eight hours of television a week. Maybe if we all cut a few hours off that and gave more of ourselves back to our community, we’d be better off. The historically unique combination of longevity, time affluence, and wisdom produces unprecedented potential for elders to be seen not as social outcasts but as a living bridge between yesterday, today, and tomorrow—a critical evolutionary role that no other age group can perform. In this third age, we need to focus not simply on striving to be youthful but also to be useful. How can we be most helpful to our children, to our communities, and to the future?

And there surely is a need, particularly during this high-anxiety period in history: so many in our communities really need more involvement from grown-ups. They need us to share—not hoard—our life experience and perspective, as coaches, mentors, teachers, guides, and surrogate parents and grandparents. We should also reach out to people in other neighborhoods and even other parts of the world.

 

About Dr. Ken Dychtwald 

As a psychologist, gerontologist, author of 18 books, celebrated public speaker and teacher, successful entrepreneur, documentary filmmaker and CEO of Age Wave, Dr. Ken Dychtwald has been helping people look ahead for decades, both at their own – and their clients, consumers, patients and voters’ - futures as well as the culture at large. He has been a key player in the emergence of the Human Potential, Holistic Health, Healthy Aging and Longevity movements and has given presentations to over two million people worldwide at high profile events alongside the likes of Barack Obama, Bill Clinton, Nelson Mandela, Tony Blair, Ronald Reagan, Bucky Fuller, Al Gore, and Bono.




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