CHOICES & CHANGES

For the first time in human history, the prospect of living a long, healthy and productive life has become a reality for the majority of people. What was the privilege of the few has become the destiny of the many. Robert Butler, MD, Gerontologist Choices &, Changes is offered as a guide on how to plan to get the most from lifes second half-not how to plan to get the most from retirement. While you may think this is splitting hairs, you will come to realize how the words we use impact our perceptions, our self-image and ultimately our reality when planning for and experiencing the future. I have attempted to avoid the use of stereotypical terms like retiree, retirement, senior and other mindless terms often used to categorize millions of active, wise and responsible citizens (except when necessary to establish context.) I contend that how you choose to view the years ahead and your role in shaping that view will have a major impact on the quality and quite possibly the quantity of those years. Therefore, before discussing the elements of your life plan, it is important to spend some time talking about expectations, aspirations and the words we use when discussing and creating our plans. In order to communicate with one another, we use words first, to create categories in which we then place people and things, and then, to create criteria with which to distinguish between those categories (age, sex, nationality, race, religion, education, etc). As we do this, the categories ultimately (and often unconsciously) shape our world view. Retirement, for example, is a word stereotypically used to categorize that portion of life that occurs when one quits working and becomes old. As such, we tend to d