Composing a Further Life

you check the dictionary:
dependence
, it turns out, carries the connotation of reliance or trust, and
dependency
carries the connotation of subordination. The expectation that a man will be the sole support of his family puts a great and frightening burden upon him that may even drive him away and obscures the value of what a wife does as well as what she would be able to do in an emergency.
    It is true that children can be a burden—especially when we define childhood as requiring vast amounts of unnecessary labor and equipment. But they are also a gift. It is true that the old can be a burden—especially when conventions and fashions cut them off from participation—but they, too, can make a contribution. The presence of Marian Robinson, Michelle Obama’s mother, in the White House has carried a message about mutual support between generations almost as important as the fact that America put at least some of its history of racism behind it.
    Part of the challenge, then, in growing older, is to discover the ways, arising from a lifetime of experience and in spite of reduced strength and stamina, in which it continues to be possible to contribute. The corresponding challenge to society is to recognize that contribution and to benefit from it instead of dismissing it. As we look for patterns of reciprocity at different stages of life, it may be important to consider every human activity and see the completed circuits of exchange rather than seeing benefits moving only in one direction. What does the physician gain from her patients besides fees? What does the teacher learn from his pupils? How does the comedian feed on laughter and the artist on recognition, and how does the politician rely on the trust and enthusiasm of supporters?
    Through questions like these we can discover the reciprocities in the emerging shape of lives as we gradually become a four-generation society—a society in which great-grandparents are as common as grandparents were in the past and possibly more so. We may find that longevity contributes as much to our humanity as has the extension of childhood. In the meantime, however, the fear of becoming useless and dependent erodes the spirit as definitions are turned into fact, for the most toxic aspect of aging is the negative beliefs that seniors may come to have about themselves and about each other.
    Aging today has become an improvisational art form calling for imagination and willingness to learn. Increased longevity will challenge us not only to revise expectations but also to discover unexpected possibilities, arranging life in new and satisfying patterns, and to explore how newly perceived possibilities relate to earlier life choices. In the process we will encounter gradual—or sometimes sudden—shifts of consciousness and identity that accompany awareness of the new situation.
    When do you move from Adulthood I to Adulthood II? When you reflect that you have done much of what you hoped to do in life but it is not too late to do something more or different. The doorway to this new stage of life is not filing for Social Security but thinking differently and continuing to learn. Adulthood II is characterized by the wisdom culled from long lives and rich experience, the most acceptable and positive trait associated with longevity, but combines it with energy and commitment in the context of a new freedom from some kinds of day-to-day responsibility, a freedom that challenges expectations and may even be frightening. Together these produce the
active wisdom
that older adults have to offer, which gives them the potential for altering the shape of public and family life in America.
    Adulthood II comes as a gift and offers new choices, but it may take time to assess the possibilities. Erik Erikson used the term
moratorium
for periods when young people put off commitment while they struggle for a sense of identity, sometimes lasting well beyond college. Many older adults take a somewhat similar interval for further study or travel or experimenting with some model of retirement that proves to be temporary, trying to find a meaningful activity they are ready to engage in during this new stage of life. I have sometimes used the metaphor of an
atrium
to describe Adulthood II, stretching my architectural metaphor, as if the new room added to the house were an atrium in the center, with doorways to all the other stages or rooms and open to the sky, but the metaphor seems most appropriate to the