HOW TO LIVE FOREVER

HOW TO LIVE FOREVER – MARC FREEDMAN

If you buy Marc Freedman’s latest book, hoping for a how-to manual on cryogenics, you may be disappointed – although there are passing references to Silicon Valley titans and their attempts to defeat – or at least to postpone – death. If, however, you are looking for an interesting, thought-provoking reflection on personal legacy and inter-generational collaboration, then Marc’s book will certainly not disappoint. On the contrary.

Marc Freedman has devoted most of his adult life to improving opportunities for older people; and it transpires that the answer posed by the book’s provocative title, is contained in its sub-title: “The enduring power of connecting the generations.” You live forever through nurturing younger people who will live on after you, and who in turn, nurture others.

Freedman explains:

“Almost a century ago, G. Stanley Hall, the father of American psy-chology and the person who put adolescence on the map, argued that the life course was changing in profound ways. A new period was opening up between the middle years and true old age. He termed this period an “Indian summer.”

Human beings, in Hall’s words, didn’t reach the height of their capacities until the “shadows begin to slant eastward, and for a sea-son, which varies greatly with individuals, our powers increase as the shadows lengthen.”

The way I figure it, the shadows slanting eastward amount to the perfect intersection of time lived, time left to live, and our connec-tion to the time beyond our lives. It’s that season when we know what matters and have the time and capacity—and the motivation—to do something significant with it.”

Freedman shares his own experience of being mentored as a young man, and his experience of establishing and running the Experience Corps ( www.aarp.org/experience-corps ) and later the Encore programme (“second acts for the greater good,” www.encore.org ) which takes senior executives later in their careers and helps them transition into significant Civil Society roles. He also references analogous programmes around the world including Now Teach (www.NowTeach.org.uk ) here in the UK, set up by the former Financial Times columnist Lucy Kellaway; and Singapore’s ambitious programme for inter-generational collaboration.

Freedman quotes his hero John Gardner – with whom he worked closely on the establishment of Experience Corps to mobilise older people to mentor the young -

“America today faces breathtaking opportunities disguised as insoluble problems.”

“There could be,” Freedman concludes, “no better benedic-tion for the multigenerational society, its soaring possibilities, and what that shift might mean for all ages.”

Indeed. And for “America” now read “the world.”

There is also a wonderful quote from John F Kennedy shortly before he was assassinated:

“It is not enough for a great nation merely to have added new years to life; our objective must also be to add new life to those years.” He decried the loneliness and disconnection faced by many over sixty and “the wall of inertia” that needlessly exists between older people and their communities, impoverishing both.

I completed reading “How to live forever,” just as I heard of the sudden death of a longstanding friend in his mid-50, after a very aggressive onset of cancer. My bereavement was made all the more poignant by a prayer / poem that Marc quotes at the end of his book: “We Wait Too Long,”

“Death has claimed a loved one,

thus reminding us of our own mortality.

We wait too long to show kindness, 

To speak words of gratitude and concern,

We wait too long to set aside selfishness, 

To give of our time and to share our bounty,

We wait too long to give the love 

Which may no longer be needed tomorrow. 

In tribute to our departed, let us now resolve,

To wait no longer, to delay no more;

Rather, let us begin to do now,

Those good things which can be done today.”

This is a beautiful book which radiates optimism and positivity. I heartily recommend it. 

How to live forever: The enduring power of connecting the generations” by Marc Freedman is published by Public Affairs Books.