Hello friends,
I’m popping in to reflect with you a little about my turning 64 soon (not what I thought it would be when I was 24), and to say there’s room still at my June 12-14 Rowe, MA workshop, Living a Life you Love with the Money you Have. These two topics actually fit together – read on, hang in and you’ll see how.
Yes I am turning 64 in a month, but not in the Beatles way. I’m not losing my hair. I can feed myself. My travels take me more places than a cottage on the Isle of Wight. Yes I’m handy mending fuses and gardening… but also singing, dancing, doing improv theater and serving up lectures about money AND life. I know that having lasted to 64, I’m statistically likely to have another 15 or 20 years in me, barring any more cancer. I know that as an educated Boomer I’ve had one of the most privileged lives of any human of all time – that generations after me may not have as much stuff or as long a life or as strong a sense that the world is their oyster.
I wake up every day saying “Life is good” just because it is. I have plenty of what every social scientist says makes life good: friends and relations, community, health, beautiful surroundings, useful work to do, and enough provisions to feel secure.
So with all this privilege and good fortune, with a truly long and happy life behind me and perhaps another 20 years ahead, what’s next? Two generations ago “next” at 64 was decline and death, with maybe a little dementia phase thrown in. But my cohort has all our wits about us and even if Social Security didn’t seem like a mirage and even if their investments hadn’t dropped 30% most of my friends would not be “retiring”. We’re not getting a Lazy-Boy and TV clicker and calling it quits on active life. We’re not abandoning productive work. Maybe they called these “the golden years” because the Boomers cleverly took all the gold and are leaving the dross to future generations – but my pals are not like that.
True, we actually don’t have the energy, drive or knees of 30 year-olds which takes some adjustment. True I’ve had to say good bye to a wasp waist and a swan neck. But there’s a secret about getting older that I’m just getting the hang of. Letting go gets sweeter and sweeter. The wisdom I struggled to attain in my 30s seems available without struggle now. The ego that stuck to me like fly paper in my 30s has lost a lot of its glue. When I seek understanding, I have enough adversity and achievement behind me to make an educated guess at truth. I know I don’t have forever, and that gives focus and sobriety to my days, but also more real joy.
As many of you know, I’ve just passed my 5-years-since-diagnosis marker. When I hit the cancer wall five years ago, the outward expanding trajectory of my life did a U turn and I headed within to heal and change. I’m now well and well established in a new life so ready or not, the cocoon is opening. The book tour for the reissue of Your Money or Your Life showed me that my public speaking chops still work. Maybe in one of my surgeries my funny bone got directly hooked to my jawbone because my audiences and I laughed our heads off. Here’s what an attendee in Atlanta said:
Vicki, your talk last night was brilliant; we have not had so much fun in years and any speaker who can teach “money lessons” in the midst of the current economic woes AND have her audience laughing deserves praise – and attention!
Laughter actually seems as crucial as thrift to making it through these times. It is also crucial to me. If I have about 7000 days left, I do want to enjoy every minute, whether watching the sunset or fielding questions from people at a lecture.
Not only are my Your Money or Your Life presentations funnier, they dare to go deeper than ever before, organizing themselves around three core questions rather than nine practical steps. I love engaging with these questions. They are simple yet endless, short but revealing more aspects of the truth over time.
1. What is money – really? I digging down to see what’s behind our irrational money behavior. We discover our money personalities and fixations. The cultural norms and messages that will not bend easily to new insights. The structures of the money, banking and financial systems that are rooted in a fundamental insanity – that we can sustain growth on a finite planet. Cracking this open liberates us to reshape our money lives and also to defrock the Emperor Money so he has less power over us, our children and the natural world.
2. How much is enough – really? While the question sounds like a rebuke for excess it really is an invitation to choose from a core of satisfaction rather than a state of distraction. Enough isn’t really a limit. It’s an alive relationship with the world of form, both shaping it and being shaped by it. It’s a place of intimacy with reality.
3. What makes us happy – really? The Dalai Lama has made it safe for the Puritans in us all to say that the purpose of life is to be happy. Content. Satisfied. Peaceful. The search for happiness can shift from self-indulgence to self inquiry. Really, in the presence of what have I experienced deep and lasting joy? How can I direct all of my life energy towards that aliveness and have my financial life support rather than abort this lightness of being?
These are the questions I hope to raise as I travel and speak, and to approach them both inspirationally and practically so we can be free of confusion and empowered to pursue our passions unencumbered by the bear traps and booby prizes our culture sets on our course to direct us to open our wallets and shut our mouths. I’d be happy to bring all of this – spirit and message both – to groups and communities and universities and conferences. My shingle is once more out.
So there you have my take on 64 – at least how I am as I inch up on it. In celebration a group of friends is going to march with me in the 4th of July parade to the squeezebox playing “When I’m 64”. We’re costuming up to show what we each think getting older, wiser or more foolish looks like. If you can’t be there, send me a word picture of what 64 is to you. Or as the Bards say:
Send me a postcard, drop me a line,
Stating point of view
Indicate precisely what you mean to say
Yours sincerely, (NOT) Wasting Away.
Now you can see how 64 and the Rowe workshop next weekend fit together. Rowe is my first post book tour teaching opportunity. Monique Tilford, my coauthor, and I are going to give it our all. I hope the Universe gets that I’ve changed my order from “leave me alone, I’m sick” to “Howdy.” If you are in the vicinity of Western MA and can come over, great! Rowe is simply a beautiful place to spend a weekend eating good food and meeting great people. If not, please do send this on to friends and support us in launching a new season of enlivening people with our words.
Love to all
Vicki
FYI
Beatles When I'm 64 Lyrics:
When I get older, losing my hair,
Many years from now,
Will you still be sending me a Valentine
Birthday greetings, bottle of wine?
If I'd been out till quarter to three
Would you lock the door?
Will you still need me, will you still feed me,
When I'm sixty-four?
oo oo oo oo oo oo oo oooo
You'll be older too, (ah ah ah ah ah)
And if you say the word,
I could stay with you.
I could be handy, mending a fuse
When your lights have gone
You can knit a sweater by the fireside
Sunday mornings, go for a ride.
Doing the garden, digging the weeds,
Who could ask for more?
Will you still need me, will you still feed me,
When I'm sixty-four?
Every summer we can rent a cottage
In the Isle of Wight, if it's not too dear
We shall scrimp and save
Grandchildren on your knee:
Vera, Chuck, and Dave
Send me a postcard, drop me a line,
Stating point of view
Indicate precisely what you mean to say
Yours sincerely, Wasting Away.
Give me your answer, fill in a form
Mine for evermore
Will you still need me, will you still feed me,
When I'm sixty-four?
Whoo!
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