Why is it important to prepare for retirement?

'Start early' is the main message from project partners at the close of BALL, a two-year project led by the Evris Foundation in Iceland, in which Reykjavik (Iceland) and Lublin (Poland) Universities of the Third Age and the Permanent University of the University of Alicante (UPUA) also participated. The project (pdf file) addressed the urgent need to establish directives and best practices for preparing individuals early for retirement, stressing the importance of on-going learning, environment and cultural factors, and knowledge sharing.

The figures indicate that in welfare societies a person aged 50-55 has between ten and fifteen years before retirement, and then twenty more years of a full and active life after that. It is essential, then, that we ask ourselves what we want to do with our time during this period of our lives; what might we need to train in beforehand, from financial and legal issues, to preventive health, social skills, leisure activities, dependence prevention.

One of the researcher  Concepción Bru stresses the importance of carrying out awareness-raising campaigns on the value of the third age in society, aimed both at the general public and those approaching retirement: "More and more people are living longer and in better health [and] the sudden stop in the activity you have spent your whole life engaged in" can lead to depression and related mental health issues.

Encouraging physical activity and inspiring a sense of inclusion and purpose is the overarching goal of the BALL project, but the key for Bru is that retirees, or those approaching retirement, are able to "reinvent themselves. Engage in something they've never done before, like volunteering. If you prepare yourself in good time and with good organisation and guidance, a better retirement is possible".

The idea, Bru tells us, is to continue work in the EU to put these recommendations into practice. Indeed, they are already being implemented by companies that took part in the project, as well as at an institutional level, via the regional ministry of education and the University of Alicante. Not to mention at the UPUA itself: "Much of the material we already teach is straight out of the project recommendations. This is why they asked us to participate, for our experience" (Bru).

A healthy life style is important as we age

Leading a healthy lifestyle not only extends one's lifespan, but it also shortens the time that is spent disabled - a finding that had previously eluded public health scientists and demonstrates the value of investing in healthy lifestyle promotion, even among the elderly.

In an earlier post, I referred to a study called Healthy Life Expectancy (pdf file) that shows that living longer does not guarantee people will be fit enough to work into old age.

I talked about the stats that show many of us, while living longer, spend many of those years in poor health. New research shows that we can change this pattern. An analysis of a quarter century of data by scientists at the University of Pittsburgh Graduate School of Public Health and their colleagues nationwide revealed that older adults with the healthiest lifestyles could expect to spend about 1.7 fewer years disabled at the end of their lives, compared to their unhealthiest counterparts. The study results are online and scheduled for the October issue of the Journal of the American Geriatrics Society.

If we spend less time in poor health, this will have enormous personal and societal implications, ranging from quality of life to health care costs. By staying healthy, by exercising and by eating properly so our overall heath improves thus improving our lifestyle we may postpone both our own death and disability, but it may mean less time in poor health at the end of our life.

The researchers examined data collected by the Cardiovascular Health Study, which followed 5,888 adults from Sacramento County, Calif.; Forsyth County, N.C.; Washington County, Md.; and Allegheny County, Pa., for 25 years. All of the participants were aged 65 or older and were not institutionalized or wheelchair-dependent when they enrolled.

The participants reported or were assessed for various lifestyle factors, including smoking habits, alcohol consumption, physical activity, diet, weight and their social support system. The researchers took into account and adjusted results for such factors as participants' age, sex, race, education, income, marital status and chronic health conditions.

Across all the participants, the average number of disabled years directly preceding death - years when the person had difficulty eating, bathing, toileting, dressing, getting out of bed or a chair, or walking around the home - averaged 4.5 years for women and 2.9 years for men, which is inline with the world wide data.

For each gender and race group, those with the healthiest lifestyle (those who were non-smokers of a healthy weight and diet and getting regular exercise) not only lived longer, but had fewer disabled years at the end of their lives. For example, a white man in the healthiest lifestyle group could expect to live 4.8 years longer than his counterpart in the unhealthiest group, and at the end of his life, he'd likely spend only two of those years disabled, compared to 3.7 years for his unhealthy counterpart.

Put another way, that man's healthy lifestyle has given him nearly three more years of active life free of disability than his unhealthy counterpart, who not only died earlier but spent the last three-and-a-half years of his life disabled - a larger percentage of those remaining years.

So the bottom line for me is to invest and take the time to maintain a healthy lifestyle and encourage my friends and other people to maintain healthy behaviors into old age. The results of this survey indicate that as seniors we need to maintain a healthy lifestyle. Being healthy may allow to reduce risk of being disabled for a longer period when you are near the end of life.

We hold faith (revisited)

Changing a few words changes the meaning and direction and message we want our readers to hear. Words have power and force that go beyond the writer. A few days ago, I wrote that we hold faith and I looked at death. Yet by changing and deleting a few words in the post to look at birth, we hold faith, has a changed perspective.

For a mother or a father of a newborn life becomes a storehouse of anticipated dreams, of unanswered questions, of yet to be filled dreams and desires, of unanswered questions both welcomed and rewarding, self-love and self sacrifice.

When someone is born, their life becomes an unfinished biography, a book with a plot that hangs in the air, an ever-expanding half-finished dream. Life hides bundles of truths to be discovered, of joys yet to be felt, love turned outside in. The birth of a child, uplifts us from nothing, gives us back joyful memories that were suspended in our past. These memories can heal the soul, lift the heart, reveal the truth or justify the intentions of our imagination.

When a birth occurs, life begins to mean so much, Death seems a million miles away and unwanted. Life and living for the child become both the question and the answer, the problem and the solution. A new life becomes the beginning.

We talk about the future when a birth happens. We listen to our ministers preach convincingly about life because we know they have experienced it themselves. We seek out those who are more knowledgeable about life than us and have experienced it at first hand. We hold faith that there is a better life for the new. Some of us hold faith with religion and others who we believe will show us a better way for the new one with us. 

There is love, hope, and joy in a birth. We celebrate with the parents, the family and friends, we rejoice in the hope that the child will have a better life and will not make the same mistakes we made.  We call on our gods to show the way for the child to be a good person. 

Celebrate your life and all new life by being the best you can be.

We hold faith

For we that live, when we lose someone to death, death becomes a storehouse of discontinued dreams, of unanswered questions, of unfulfilled dreams and desires, of unanswered problems of regrets and remorse, self-hate, self-love or unjustified guilt and shame.

When someone dies, their life becomes an unfinished biography, a book with a plot that hangs in the air, an ever silenced half-finished dream. Death hides bundles of lies never admitted, of sins never confessed, of love or hate turned inside out. The death of a friend or loved one, reduces everything to nothing, leaves us with suspended memories that can heal the soul, break the heart, distort the truth or justify the intentions of the survivor's imagination.

Why does death mean so much and life mean so little? Why is death a million miles away and just around the corner? How can death be unwanted, unanticipated for some, welcomed as long lost friend, a conquering hero for others? Why is death both the question and the answer, the problem and the solution?  Death can be the beginning of the end or the end of the beginning.

We do not talk of death, it is a subject like religion and politics to be avoided. Why? How can ministers preach so convincingly about death when they have never experienced it themselves? Why must they rely on the words of a long dead God whose writings fill thousands of pages and are subject to as many interpretations?

Who can be more knowledgeable about death than those who have been there and have experienced it at first hand? But those who have experienced it cannot return to share their experiences and their expertise with the living. We hold faith that there is an afterlife, and we have religion and other fakes, fraudsters, and mystics who show us the way. Yet they depend on dead spirits and ancient text, and images floating in the afterlife of the hereafter to convince us?

To ease the pain and loss of loved ones when they die, we invented gods, religions, all the gospels and all the angels including the horned, long tail devil. When we listen to those who preach of life hereafter, or of reincarnation or in other forms of life after death we suspend our critical thinking. Why do we not ask who invented heaven and hell or why it was invented?

When I die please do not cry, or be sad, walk away and celebrate my life by being the best you can be.