With Purpose Success, part 4

I'm often taken by the wisdom and depth of thinking of Hindus, whose spiritual leaders have long championed things like service to others and leading a life of meaning. Among their more interesting rites and customs is a celebration they call Maha Kumbh Mela, which means grand pitcher festival. Every twelve years some seventy million Hindu pilgrims meet near Allahabad, India, for six weeks, where they dip, millions at a time, into the water where three different rivers converge-the Ganges, the Yamuna and, in lore, the Saraswati, which years ago went dry.
Hindu mythology holds that gods and demons once fought a war over the nectar of immortality and spilled some from a pitcher into the confluence of those three rivers. By bathing in them, according to Hindu custom, they heal their souls and may become free from the desire for material things, which leads to spiritual purity.
The massive gathering results in a temporary city of 50,000 tents, and the movement of millions of people into the waters at once is so gigantic that it is visible from outer space. But this ritual is more than just a spectacle of humanity. It's an enormous public profession that there are more important things in life than personal gain. Hindus believe that the world population is one large family, and there at the nexus of three great rivers, every dozen years they celebrate the simple holiness of doing good things for others.
That the festival takes place at the meeting point of three rivers is no accident. These waters flowing from the Himalayas have long sustained life in the region and are a symbol of great power-in this case, at least to Hindus, the power to become better human beings. Why do I mention this ancient rite? First and foremost, it speaks to mankind's innate desire to lead good and decent lives, which must include some higher purpose.
But I also like the image of three powerful currents meeting in one place, generating enough wattage to foment large-scale change. We are today at just such a confluence, not of three rivers but of three social currents that are coming together for the first time. As the Hindus believe in the magical convergence of the Ganges, Yamuna, and Saraswati, so I believe in the magic of these merging trends:
1. Retirement is being retired. As I've said, people today are living longer and are healthier than ever, and they want more than a daily golf game or round of pinochle to occupy their time. Today's retirees feel youthful and vital; they want to stay engaged and relevant. For some, that means staying at work longer. But for many others it means working at giving away their money in ways that make them feel good, or giving away their time, skills, and energy to further a cause near to their heart.
The days of accepting a gold watch and disappearing into a meaningless leisure-filled sunset for twenty or thirty years are coming to an end.
New generations of maturing men and women are coming to view their unprecedented longevity as a time to play, certainly, but also to share not just what they've earned but also what they've learned. Millions of people are now wondering what the most satisfying balance between leisure and legacy might be.