Working to give Purpose to Others

I never dreamt that, at age 65, having retired from a hardly known area of the university work, I would or could get a job enriching and saving lives and preventing dementia, but that’s what’s happened—here I am, and I love it! Let me explain.

Concrete things in life get most of the press, most of the attention: floods, fires, famine (the ‘F’s), money, wars, viruses, scandals, you know, the newsmakers, the headline hogs, concrete things. Does it matter how much coffee you drink? Whether you sleep on your back or your side? Whether you have magnets in your mattress? These are all tangible, concrete things, and they gain a lot of traction in people’s imaginations.

But what about the intangible, the not so concrete? Folks might dismiss those things, but what if we could show tangible effects from intangible causes?

I work for a startup called Seniors Junction. We’re an ed-tech company, an aging and longevity company, a social enterprise, dedicated to preventing seniors isolation and helping seniors find autonomy, purpose, and social connectedness. Is that a bit too airy-fairy for you? Well please read on. Study after study, following seniors for an average of seven years, has shown that isolated seniors, lonely seniors, and seniors living alone run between a one quarter and one third greater risk of dying young, or suffering from dementia. Is that tangible enough to get your attention? I’ll just let that sink in for a minute….

High blood pressure and high blood sugar are surely major health risks, but isolation trumps them all; yes it carries greater risks of negative health outcomes than obesity, and it’s more dangerous even than smoking.

Okay, you’re wondering (I know you are), how does a senior become isolated and what can be done about it? Good questions. It’s easiest to tell part of my own story. Five years ago I was teaching at a university. I had a good mix of courses: some small graduate courses, some medium-sized courses for students majoring in my subject, and some very large courses for the broader university population. Altogether I taught about 400 students each year. I was an active researcher, my publications well known in my field and highly regarded. I did more than my share of administrative work, serving on different committees for curriculum and program development.

My wife was disabled, and I reasoned that, once I hit the magic number for pension eligibility by my age plus years of service, every year more that I would work would be one year without spending time with her. So I retired. Thirty and one half years at the university, at age 59 and a half. I called it quits. We put our house up for sale, and built a new one in the city on Lake Ontario we had chosen for retirement.

Retirement. It’s thought of as the ultimate reward for years of work, but it is also a loss, a social loss. Take away the students, the colleagues, the committees, take away one’s purpose and connectedness. It is a loss. Most of us plan for the financial aspects of retirement, but may not think about our time and the purpose that our jobs give us.

And most of us have a spouse or partner, and somehow we think--what? I guess I thought that magically we would die together or within a short time of each other. Such a childish idea. That’s very rare. It didn’t happen in my case. The third night of our retirement in the new city my wife was rushed to emergency. After surgery it was found that she had a malignant tumor, an aggressive cancer. None of the cancer researchers I knew could suggest anything. Medical treatments did not even slow the disease down. She died in four-and-a-half months.

These are some ways to become an isolated senior. Retirement, being widowed after 39 years of marriage, going from being a care giver to losing that person, moving to a new city. The director of the funeral home gave me a piece of advice. Men, he said, lack social networks, and many widowers just hang around home. There are more widows than widowers, and very few good role models for widowers. I made a list of things to do, to keep myself from being isolated. Somewhere on the list was playing bridge. I played as a child and teenager. I reasoned that I could take the game up again for socialization.

I usually can tell a widow or widower by sight and sound. There is a dullness in the eyes, a rigidity to the skin, and something in the voice that I can’t quite describe. I phoned my cousin Penelope, who lived three hundred miles away. She had lost her husband a year before my wife died. I told her I needed a social network. She said, “You expect me to conjure up a social network for you from three hundred miles away?” I said, “Well, if you could…”

Two weeks later Penelope arranged for me to be introduced to people just down the road who held house concerts, perfect for me (music is my discipline). At the reception there was a lady who was wondering how it worked to publish a book on Amazon. I had done that, and I told her. Apparently she read the book and told the hosts that I hold a PhD in Music. They called me up and we had a talk. They operated a web site that reviewed concerts and they invited me to join the reviewing team, which I did, and enjoyed a fabulous circuit of concerts, with free tickets for myself and a guest! The husband also became my partner in four-hand piano playing. Thank you Penelope!

Hmmmn. That’s enough of my back story for the moment. This piece is about my new job. I was hired when Seniors Junction was founded. My position doesn’t have a title yet. That will come later, I’m sure, along with a salary. At the moment, we are getting things started. We began with podcasts, inviting guests from various sectors of the industry, with the aim of getting ourselves well informed and doing some networking. There were companies with apps to make friends, social robots, professors of sociology, psychology, and gerontology, physicians, influencers, reporters on aging, seniors themselves, and many others.

It’s an extraordinary list of podcast guests. The podcasts are archived on our Youtube channel: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCT1tJS7iEjmOIBg5d4f_WlA. Two of us conducted these interviews, each about half an hour in length. After the first thirty podcasts, some things were very clear. Many seniors are isolated. Few effective measures are in place to prevent or help that condition. Our retirement homes, designed to be communities for seniors living independently, are not fulfilling that function. Many of them aim to provide for a personalised retirement experience, but they are falling short of that. Nutrition, pharmaceutical support, hygiene and safety, these elements seem to be well addressed. Once again it is the tangible that takes precedence. Personalised purpose, connectedness, and autonomy? They tend to fall by the wayside, with the results enumerated above.

Activities are a very important element in well-being, and not just any activities, but purposeful activities that can be shared, and that can be turned into hobbies, or interests, or volunteering. I am the oldest employee in Seniors Junction by about thirty years, and I am used to explaining my ideas by referring to movies. It turns out that, to most of the team, all of the movies I have seen and refer to are “old movies.” But my colleagues are patient with me, and let me explain the scenes so that they can imagine what I am talking about.

I am thinking of a scene from Cocoon, a film from 1985 set in a retirement community in Florida. In the sequence I have in mind, Hume Cronyn’s character talks to his deceased wife. “Today,” he says, “I learned how to weave a basket. I used to have the entire garment district in my back pocket, and I learned how to weave a basket.”

I would say that the recreational director (if there was one), did not do the best job in matching that character’s interests with an activity. Further, even if he had taken a sudden interest in baskets, would it have “stuck” with him as a hobby or interest, or would it just be a way of filling his time for a single afternoon?

Did you see the film Wrestling Ernest Hemingway (1993)? Two retirees meet in a community in Florida. One of them, outwardly brash, probably had, in his youth, wrestled Hemingway. He dwindles and dies in the movie, devoid of purpose. The other is a shy, childless barber, who has the goal of going to a dance, even though he has no one to go with him. He survives, and at the end of the film we see him thrilled to enter the dance hall. The barber had purpose. The wrestler did not.

One of our podcast guests, a well published professor, coined the term “serious leisure.” We all certainly took work seriously enough. Ought we not also take our “leisure” seriously? Seniors Junction (www.seniorsjunction.com) offers courses given by experts in their fields, mainly retired university professors, once a week for eight weeks, with the aim of giving seniors shared purpose. Evidence has shown that eight weeks makes a “brief intervention” that can make a new activity stick. I have taught two of these courses for Seniors Junction, one on Renaissance music, and the other on Music in the Movies, my two areas of research.

Courses are live, an hour and a half each week (about an hour of teaching and half an hour of discussion), and delivered by Zoom. I’ve adjusted my style of teaching a bit, and so far the results are validating our ideas, as are the guests on our podcasts.

Having tested our ideas with two trial courses, we are moving on to a larger slate of seven courses in October, and we are holding an industry summit on September 17. Participants may take up a new activity, or resume a prior activity. In either case they own it, make it part of their lives, and share it with other members of the class, then with their friends and acquaintances. It makes them live in a larger world, a more vibrant one, and it helps them build an identity in retirement. Imagine that instead of identifying oneself as a “former” something, one would be at present engaged in meaningful activities with others. Studies show that this combats isolation. That is our goal.

What’s my working day like? It starts at 8, with the daily “standup,” a brief (usually about fifteen-minute) check-in with the whole team. This is a very good idea. I don’t mean to offend, but millennials are not the best at communicating within a team, and it’s important to hear from them every day. “Did you finish X or Y?” Answer: “No, I tried it but got stuck so I just left it.” Followup-question: “Did you not think to tell one of us that you were stuck? We need it tomorrow.” Silence. No it didn’t occur to the millennial, so it’s good to find these things out at standup.

At the end of standup, my boss, Namrata Bagaria, the CEO, a pioneer in the aging social field, holding a Masters degree in Public Health from Harvard, and finishing her PhD in Digital Transformation (I didn’t even know what that was before), says something like, “Paul will you stay on the call?” Then we discuss what is happening that day, what we need, what developments there have been, and what the concerns are. We adjourn at about 9 a.m. There is usually a podcast to record from 10 to 11, and another one from 12 to 1. Some preparation is needed to make the introductions, and there is time afterwards to network with the guests. My afternoons are taken up with work on the courses. I teach mine at 2 p.m. and there is preparation to be done. I have been working with instructors on the next set of courses (to be offered starting in October). There are lesson plans to check, objectives to clarify, posters to be made for publicity, titles to be okayed.

Marketing is mainly up to Namrata, but I assist with it. Last week we both held discussions with the panelists who will speak at our industry summit. Questions had to be agreed on, introductions made, and terms established.

Namrata and I take turns posting blogs to our Facebook group. We each post something every second day.

And then comes my own leisure, which I take seriously, and consider a natural extension of my job. I have resumed playing tennis and bridge, both of them after a hiatus of just over forty years. I am taking tennis lessons for the first time, and learning to hit the ball properly, so I am injury free, and I enjoy my tennis time. The other players value me especially at the net. When I was 18. I did not know how to play at the net, and stayed back.

I learned bridge from one of my aunts as a child, and played until university, then stopped. Tennis has physical, intellectual, and social benefits. Bridge has the last two. Bridge is more conversational than tennis. Both have communities and they are tightly knit. They notice when someone is absent, and they know when someone is facing difficulties. I love both.

I like to hear people’s stories. Prof. William Randall, a narrative gerontologist and one of our instructors, says that each of us is a narrative, and that by telling our stories we help ourselves. There can be dark parts to a story. There can be “narrative errors.” There can be much beauty. I am always intrigued by the people I meet and chat with between tennis points or hands of bridge.

I attend a book club, and sometimes the members ask me for suggestions. I have figured out that they like mysteries, and like them more if there is a cultural or historical component. They seem to be enjoying my latest book idea.

My club has a senior men’s group, called The Rogues, and I enjoy that. The name is an acronym: Retired Old Guys Unlimited Enjoyment. How can one do better? The Rogues walk together, meet together, undertake projects, and keep track of each other. There is even a Rogue choir, and I will be contributing to that.

Spirituality can be a tremendous resource as we age or when we experience loss. Some cultures have maintained a great interest in spirituality, while others seem to have left it by the side of the road. One of my favorite TV comedy series was The Beverley Hillbillies, and the character I liked best was Jethro. I suppose he reminded me of my large, somewhat ungainly, enthusiastic self. An army recruiter asked him if his uncle was a “strict disciplinarian.” Jethro replied without hesitation, “Uncle Jed says it doesn’t matter what church you go to as long as you go.”

Years later I think there is a lot to this quippy line. Undeniably many churches have communities, and these can be excellent bulwarks against isolation. But I think, more than that, we all need some spiritual direction or motivation, whether that would involve an organized religion or not. If we have greatly decreased the role of religion in North American society (and European society too, for that matter), with what have we replaced it? My paternal grandmother and my father both had a resilient faith that saw them through tough times. I do not express it in the ways that they did, but I am glad to say I have that, and it helps me too.

Have you read about “Blue Zones,” the places on Earth where people live much longer? Certainly the inhabitants have healthy diets and are physically active, but the social connectedness is a very great factor. They form lifelong groups of friends whom they see every day and with whom they undertake activities. Think of how much vitality this gives them! In our society this would be very rare, because most of us move away for study or work. But what if we could, in some way, create the conditions of Blue Zones for ourselves?

Thinking about this is part of my job. The city I worked in was the opposite of a Blue Zone for me. I won’t name it because some readers may be from there, and the city may work well for them. I had friendly colleagues at my university, but almost no outside friends, and little conversation outside of work. In my first year I asked another prof who was about my age if it was me, or if the environment was chilly, cold, aloof. She said that her habit had been to buy only one or two things at the grocery store so that she could talk to the cashier. Outside of work, that was the only conversation she had during the day. Yikes! Not a Blue Zone. What would be the opposite? An Orange Zone maybe?

Faced with her terminal diagnosis, my wife asked me if I wanted to move back there and take up my teaching at the university again. I said no, that we had chosen the new city for our retirement, that I would do better here. Indeed there were and are things about it that make it at least Blueish, and I am working on the rest. There were two bereavement walking groups and I went to both. I met other widows and widowers as we walked.

One of them is a brilliant research chemist who had a lab at a nearby university in the Faculty of Medecine. When I met him he had been going to a walking group, but wearing ear buds, talking to no one, and walking far ahead of everyone else. Isolation, yes? The very gifted, intuitive, insightful, and diligent facilitator took one look at my intake form and asked me to walk with him. The earbuds came out, and he talked a blue streak. We keep in touch. As Namrata says, keeping in touch with people is a “super power.”

My doctor in my new city is an old friend. We went to Grades 3 to 9 together, and we kept in touch (see above about keeping in touch). When the horrible day came for me to decide on the “code status” for my unconscious wife, he was there for me. When she died he met me for breakfast.

I had heard that the witness at my wedding was somewhere in the area. I wanted her to know what a successful marriage ours had been. I found her, and she has become my friend again. I reconnected with her sister, all of us having played in the same high school band. Her sister was married to a sterling man, who has since become my close friend. She died in a freak accident. As he went through photo albums, he found a shot of me with his deceased wife at a picnic. I cannot have been more than three years old.

My favorite story of my friend the witness concerns our band. Our high school conductor wanted to do well in the competition and he chose a very difficult piece for us to play, called Antietam, a musical depiction of that Civil War battle. I was playing the French horn, which had a lot to do in the piece, and my friend and her sister were playing flutes. The piece had a very difficult part for the claves, or wood blocks. It had to play a counter-rhythm, a rhythm that ran against what the rest of us were playing. The boy holding the claves could not play the part at all. The conductor called for my friend to put down her flute and pick up those wood blocks. She played it perfectly the first time and the rhythm of the piece came alive. We won that competition. More importantly we had a rich musical experience. Years later I searched Youtube for another performance of the piece. I found it, but without the wood blocks. That is a difficult part to play! And as you have no doubt divined, playing in a band is all about competence, autonomy, connectedness, and purpose.

You see what I am saying. I have new and old friends, communities I see every week. For me this is a Blue Zone in the making. Heaven knows I can use the benefits of a Blue Zone. And assuredly I want others like me to know how to build their own Blue Zones. All of us have waited long for retirement, why not make it as rich and worthwhile as we possibly can?

There is a story I like to tell about my maternal grandmother and my aunt, her eldest daughter. My grandmother was a very strong, practical woman. She ran the limestone quarry after my grandfather died, and I once watched her climb to the top of the stone crusher with a sledge hammer and split a large stone that was jamming up the works. The men on the job weren’t able to crack the stone. My grandmother knew just where to hit it.

My aunt was very intelligent, and my grandmother, who had not even been able to go to eight years of elementary school, wanted my aunt to have every educational opportunity. Actually Grandma wanted that for all of us. Aunt Helen went through grades 1 to 8 in four years, and after high school she went to university, studying French and Latin. Eventually she taught those subjects in high school, and my father was in her Latin class, which is how he met my mother. It is another example of the power of serious leisure and the connections of communities.

Not surprisingly my aunt developed tastes that were more cosmopolitan than my very practical, frugal grandmother. For the reception of her oldest daughter Penelope, my aunt arranged French cuisine. The food did not sit well with Grandma. The quiche in particular drew her ire. As we drove back home, Grandma finally could hold it in no longer: “Two things,” she said. “It’s not a meal without potatoes. Helen knows that, and there were no potatoes.”

“What’s the second thing?” my mother asked cautiously.

“Would someone please explain to me the virtue of scrambled egg pie?” Grandma had a point. I have never been able to think of quiche in quite the same way.

All this is background to the incident in question to which there is a moral. We were playing cards around the farmhouse table. The rule was that we could argue during cards, but not at the night lunch that followed the card game. My aunt had started to sell mutual funds. My grandmother thought it was tantamount to encouraging people to gamble and that, in her book, was a sin, and she said so. My aunt said it was service to humanity to help young people save for retirement. Grandma upped the ante. She said if my aunt wanted to perform a service to humanity she could darn her husband’s socks.

I was mesmerized. I knew my aunt would not let that pass, but she bided her time. As the moment for night lunch drew near I thought she would have to get her remark in soon. Grandma was feeling hungry. She had found a bargain on some sardines that she had enjoyed. She said, “I wish we had some of those cheap sardines.”

There was a moment of reflection, then my aunt said, “If we have to wish for them, we might as well make them expensive sardines.”

Well said, I think. We are making retirement up for ourselves, individually and as a society. Why should we settle for cheap sardines when we are building this from the ground up?

How did I connect with Namrata? Also on my personal list for prevention of isolation (along with bridge) was the thought of attending the Harvard alumni reception in Toronto. I did, and that’s where Namrata and I met. We hit it off, an inter-generational friendship that has grown and grown as we have started this venture. An alumni reception. A couple of days later I was taking a train and so was she, so we met “accidentally” at the station. Are there really any accidents? Now we talk twice a day.

Seniors Junction wants retirement to be the best it can be, and I am in full agreement. I will do my best for all seniors who come our way. Is it hyperbola to claim that my job is to help save lives and prevent dementia? I think not, and you won’t be surprised to learn that I love my job. My purpose is to help people find purpose.