MEANING AND PURPOSE IN THE 4TH QUARTER

After you have fulfilled your obligations to your family, retired from your job, done most of the things you've looked forward to doing like discarding your alarm clock and traveling wherever you want to go, then what do you do, and why? Thinking about this topic is a good thing to do before you find yourself faced with some of the serious challenges met with in old age.

Psychologist Erik Erikson designated late adulthood as "a time of struggle to develop a sense of integrity and an appreciation of your life experiences, as opposed to becoming increasingly despairing over what is and what has been and what will be." Yikes, easy to say, harder to do! And we all know older people who are pretty depressed and despairing about their own situations, and will tell you all about it whenever given the chance to do so. Is that really what you want to look forward to in your own old age?

Gaining an appreciation of your own life experiences is a good foundation for doing the needed thinking about finding meaning and purpose in your later years. Wherever you find a group of elderly people around a table, usually with a cup of coffee at hand, you hear "life review" taking place in their conversations as they tell stories from the past and laugh at good memories and stoically recount hard times. And make no mistake that they are just socializing because what they are also doing is recalling important parts of the past that need to be both remembered and appreciated. And while this form of life review is most common, it is done sporadically and unconsciously, and therefore it is not as helpful as it could be.

Undertaking to consciously look back over your life with the intention of developing an appreciation for all you have done and been can be a most useful activity, and a real help in thinking about the meaning and purpose of life in the 4th Quarter. One of the most useful ways to think about your life experiences is to undertake your life review in a group that is formed to do just this. You could be the person who forms a group to do life review. It can also be done on your own by working with a book of questions and memory joggers such as my own book, Ask Yourself! Question that Guide you Through Life's Transitions.

For starters, in thinking about meaning and purpose in the 4th Quarter how about reviewing what your obligations are at this point in your life, and asking yourself the question: What in your life at this point has real meaning for you and why? And then go on to think about what you can do that will now give you a purpose in life? Maybe you have the ability to volunteer in some way, or perhaps you can offer to be a friend to someone who needs one, or to be a good listener for any of your loved ones who need one. Of course you can think of tons of other things, and that is just what you need to do!