Thomas Jefferson was 76 when he founded the University of Virginia.
At 67, George C. Marshall received the Nobel Prize for designing the European Recovery program after World War II.
Jessica Tandy was 79 when she won an Oscar for her portrayal of Daisy Werthan in Driving Miss Daisy. She was two years older when she was nominated again for her role as Ninny Threadgood in Fried Green Tomatoes, where she taught a much-younger Kathy Bates how to find joy in life.
Perhaps it's just an accident of fate or some extraordinary talent that led these go-getters to produce such memorable late-life accomplishments. However, it's hard not to note the myriad ways in which their attitude toward life and aging inspired them to achieve.
Instead of believing that there's some biological watershed when everything starts to deteriorate and go downhill, these productive adults worked in ways that kept them actively involved participants in the business of life.
Each of these high achievers fit a category sociologist Bernice Neugarten called the "young-old." Rather than cave into some chronological divide, they parlayed their wisdom and experience into meaningful achievements that added years and dimensions to their lives.
What they all had in common was a vision or a dream-an unwillingness to be held back by preconceptions, misconceptions or fears.
At 45 years old, boxer George Foreman was more afraid of "not having a dream" than he was of climbing into the ring again with a much-younger opponent. The result was boxing history when he knocked out 26-year-old Michael Moorer in 1994 to regain the title he'd lost 20 years before and become the oldest heavyweight champion ever.
Many older adults don't recognize the depth and breadth of their own potential. Regardless of age, this can take some time and experimentation with new life roles to figure out.
A former project engineer for a satellite communications company in New York City offered to help a widowed friend with her floundering restaurant. While he thought he'd just be pitching in with salad-chopping or pancake-making (duties he has little experience with), his contribution turned out to be much bigger than that.
Once he got a hands-on feel for the restaurant business, he found, to his surprise, that he knew how to do things he'd never realized he could. Before long, for example, he was helping improve the restaurant's layout, determine food requirements and even plan the menu. All it took was applying the project-management skills and experience he'd already acquired in a different environment.
So, too, for Frank Mackey, whose entrepreneurial spirit and "tough hide" of self-confidence enabled him to break into the extremely competitive arena of commercial acting. While his younger colleagues lament the dearth of work, the 63-year-old Mackey religiously (and some would say relentlessly) makes his rounds to talent agents. In his very first six months of operation, Mackey has the beginnings of a portfolio that may make for a truly successful late-life career. Already, he's garnered projects with prestigious companies such as Sears, Roebuck and Company and Leo Burnett.
Some think he's crazy to have given up a lucrative legal career for the tough world of acting where money and projects can be scarce and the focus is on youth and glamour. But, like the late Oscar Wilde, the upbeat Mackey believes, "The only thing you never regret in old age are your mistakes." He's looking forward to the future, not rehashing the errors of the past.
As a mature adult, it's time to start gauging for yourself what is and isn't "realistic" for you. Before caving into societal or peer pressure to accept a diminished (and unnecessarily In The Fifth Discipline (1990, New York: Doubleday), author Peter Senge questions whether we've become prisoners of "the system" or of our own limited way of thinking. He believes that a spirit of mastery (which goes beyond actual skill and competence) is the key to a creative and productive life. People with a high level of personal mastery live in a continual learning mode and consider the experience its own reward.
Steve Garrett, an independent outplacement consultant in Chicago, has a poster hanging on his living room wall that reads, "There is no finish line." At his annual holiday party, he caught people contemplating the poster with amusement.
"It's a reminder to enjoy the journey," he laughed. A moment of understanding passed between us. As outplacement professionals, we have seen too many people who are trying desperately to wait out their time until retirement. Collecting pension plans and retirement monies was once a feasible (and quite practical) workplace reality, but times have changed. Before you agree to turn your remaining work years into decades of drudgery, consider the importance of rich personal experience for lifelong happiness.
After 1,846 days and nights on the road-which included photo safaris in Kenya and Tanzania, voyages to Antarctica, cruises in the Baltic and hiking in Ireland-Jack Schnedler, part-time travel editor for the Chicago Sun-Times, decided to give up his globetrotting life for a more settled existence as the managing editor of the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette. But he recognized the value of the memories he had built en route. "I can live comfortably on the interest I'll be drawing from these 12 years of indelibly banked travel editor's memories," he wrote in his last Sun-Times column.
Contrast his experience with that of an anesthesiologist client who can't conjure up a single day of vocational happiness to store in his emotional bank account. While you may envy his financial independence, he earned it with his life's blood. Would you really want to be standing in his unhappy shoes now?
The truth is, there is no finish line because there is no race. The only agenda that matters starts at birth and ends at death. As an act of self-empowerment, try abandoning the whole concept of retirement. It can bring undreamed-of opportunities for growth and achievement.
Too many people seem to accept the idea that work is automatically drudgery and leisure more fulfilling. Yet many people's lives are enriched, rather than diminished, by their work.
Barry Dawson, director of an outplacement consulting in Denver, believes that personal responsibility is the key to career and life satisfaction. Forget what other people want and expect you to do. "The goal is to star in your own movie, write your own play," he says.
Viewing work as a way to meet your needs and enrich your life can be an emotionally rewarding experience.
"That's the beauty of it," says Anita Lands. "There is no right or wrong answer. It's all up to you."
