With Purpose Success, part 44

I've also talked about a new "cyclic" life, one where you distribute your longevity bonus throughout your adult life. You work longer but take extended sabbaticals along the way. You retire from one job, and then start a whole new career. Along the way you might take the time to go back to school, fall in love again with your spouse or someone new, discover new passions, and generally reinvent yourself over and over again. "Follow your bliss and doors will open where there were no doors before," said Joseph Campbell, the mythology expert. That is what your bonus years can be all about. With good health and more time you may enjoy a virtually ageless middlescence, where instead of learning, working, retiring in chronological order you move in and out of these life phases as it suits you. 

The world hasn't yet wrapped its arms around this bold new life-cycle concept. Longevity is still portrayed as a demographic and economic force, and as a physical phenomenon. You hear about people living longer (weatherman Willard Scott became famous with his quaint vignettes of centenarians), how the graying population will destroy the pension system (which is at the heart of the debate over entitlements around the world), and how certain foods (organic) will let you live more healthfully or how vitamins will extend your youthfulness. Yet we fail to grasp that longevity is psychological and spiritual as well. It goes to the core of who you are because your bonus years cry out for an answer to questions like, where am I in the journey of my life? Am I near the end or only in the middle? How far have I traveled? How much farther do I have to go? 

Historically, life has been like a climb up a mountain-on the way up every step is a struggle, but one that improves your skills and brings you closer to your zenith. It's exhilarating as you ascend the mountain and your hard work is rewarded with an ever widening view. But then you reach the top and there is nothing more to look forward to. That's what happens to a lot of people when they hit age sixty or so-they have reached their top and feel that they have achieved all they likely will. 

From there life is a long walk down the mountain; with every step the view contracts. Life's thrills are at an end. No matter how you sugarcoat it-"the golden years"-this kind of descent ultimately proves depressing because your achievement is behind you and you have nothing to look forward to. You are winding down. 

Today, though, more and more folks are rejecting this model. They want to stay on top longer-or find new mountains to climb, and longevity lets you do it. Your bonus years aren't about being old for a longer time-they are about new achievement; second, third, and fourth acts; and making a difference in ways that you might never have imagined. 

Four Views of Life 

Amazing rebirths and transformations are quite common in nature. "A drop of water becomes vapor, which is invisible, yet vapor materializes into billowing clouds, and from clouds rain falls back to earth, forming river torrents and eventually merging back into the sea," writes Deepak 

Chopra in Life after Death: The Burden of Proof. "Has the drop of water died along the way? No, it undergoes a new expression at each stage . . . 

Any drop of water in my body could have been ocean, cloud, river or spring the day before." The potential for dramatic change exists throughout nature, and within you.