One More Time

Civic Ventures is a think tank devoted to the baby boomers. Its principal focus is the promotion - by grants, awards, and programs - of what it calls "encore careers," which, in the words of its website, are "real jobs tackling real problems and making a real impact" (www.civicventures.org). The organization encourages Boomers, who are now approaching retirement, to engage in such careers, "providing personal fulfillment doing paid work and producing a windfall of human talents to solve society's greatest problems." If the organization succeeds, those advertisements addressed to the elderly will have to stop picturing us fishing, golfing, or playing bridge.

But there are those who want to do just that. A treasured friend of mine, who died a few years ago, retired after a long and distinguished career. He could have continued to work indefinitely. Instead, he and his wife moved a hundred miles away to a mountain community where they played golf every afternoon. I never understood their decision, since he had spent his entire professional life in intense intellectual activity, but he and his wife were happy with it.

Where is the think tank devoted to my generation, the "Silent Generation?" Time coined the term in a 1951 cover story that claimed we - those born between 1925 and 1945 - are conventional, hard working, unimaginative, and silent about the great political issues of the day, unlike the flaming youths of our parents' generation. Whether or not that assessment was true - look at Martin Luther King as a counter example - we were by and large a hardworking lot. Now that our grindstones have been worn down, worn out, or taken away, at least some of us find the lack of engagement painful.

Retirement is a second career, said my late friend the golfer. He believed that retirement should be thought out and planned with care, no matter what activities the retiree chooses to pursue. I took my friend's advice and planned mine as carefully as I could. Even so, I found the transition from paid employment to leisure a bumpy one, since I now had to find, without my usual institutional and occupational support, new purposes, activities that would be useful and well as engaging. I can solve that problem for stretches at a time, until I complete one project and start looking for another. I'm sure I'm not the only elder who searches for meaningful engagement. Does anybody want to join me in founding a think tank for the Silent Generation? We could call it The One More Time Foundation.