For many seniors, the bucket list has become the ultimate celebration of aging.
Healthier, heartier and richer than generations of
retirees before them, they’re spending their golden years chasing
once-in-a-lifetime adventures—sky diving from 13,000 feet, hiking the
Great Wall of China, swimming with sharks or skiing the Andes. For them,
it’s the chance to do things they put off for years while working and
caring for family, and to make the most of the moments they have
remaining.
What’s not to love about a life of dream vacations and big thrills?
Unfortunately, quite a bit.
As
a therapist, I’ve talked to numerous seniors as both patients and
colleagues. Rather than feeling exhilarated by a life of bucket-list
adventures, they often end up feeling depressed and disconnected.
As
they travel the world to soak up experiences, too many seniors
inevitably lose track of what really matters—their connections to
family, friends and community. They feel like strangers in their own
homes. Eventually, the bucket list becomes something of an addiction:
The high from an adventure doesn’t last, so seniors find themselves
piling on experiences to keep the thrills coming, further alienating
them from real life back home.
There’s a way out of this trap.
Retirees should think about using all of the advantages that make a
bucket list possible, such as wealth and vigor, to build something much
deeper and more meaningful. Instead of taking a dream vacation to chase
fleeting thrills, they should use their time to create something more
lasting instead—whether that means building bonds with family or their
community or reimagining travel adventures as an opportunity to share
experiences and wisdom with grandchildren.
The explorer comes home
All of this can be seen in the tale of a patient of mine, whom I’ll call Dora to protect her identity.
She
and her husband spent several months and considerable treasure each
year after retirement traveling to a bucket list of exotic locales, but
found themselves feeling increasingly alienated from family and friends
who did not share in their adventures. Their children complained that
they seemed more interested in spending time with itinerant
acquaintances than with their grandchildren. Several friends became
reticent to invite them on weekend outings, fearing that any such plans
paled in comparison with their many adventures.
Dora and her
husband began to see life between trips as boring interludes. They were
world travelers untethered from any deeply satisfying social, civic or
spiritual connections and responsibilities.
During her first
appointment, Dora regaled me with stories of her travels but also
described symptoms of depression. She saw these trips as both thrilling
and empowering triumphs over her aging self, as escapes from her fears
and perceived failures.
But
in time, she also began to see her bucket list as an antidote devoid of
any enduring communion with family or friends. It didn’t give her any
roles as a guide or mentor that had been so satisfying earlier in life.
She felt like a spectator to the lives and locales of others, collecting
hundreds of photos that were destined to sit unseen in the myriad flash
drives she brought home.
The solution? She and her husband all
but gave up the bucket-list approach. They are now spending more time
with family and friends, and feel much happier and more connected.
Forget thrills
It
is easy to see, of course, the powerful forces that make the bucket
list so enticing these days. Along with longer lifespans and more cash
to spend, retirees have more freedom from day-to-day obligations, now
that so many family members live at a great distance from each other.
The world has also gotten flatter and the Internet has made arranging
travel easier, making it possible to live out fantasies that would have
been almost unthinkable 20 to 30 years ago. Besides, the experiences
can, of course, be extraordinary.
But chasing bucket-list thrills
ignores a deep psychological truth: You don’t need to make yourself
happy in old age. We get happier
naturally as we grow older.
Several
key surveys, including the U.S. General Social Survey and the Gallup
Healthways Well-Being Index, have found that well-being starts out quite
high in early adulthood, reaches a nadir in midlife and then increases
to a peak in our later years. The increased happiness doesn’t come
through doing but simply through
being. It is the
natural result of lower expectations and ambition, less emotional
volatility, increased gratitude and acceptance and enhanced
problem-solving skills.
In fact, the need for a bucket list goes
against our deepest instincts as we age. Older brains are less
influenced by novelty-seeking and more by conscientiousness; they are
less impetuous and more emotionally stable. They are somewhat slower in
data processing but more experienced and careful and less ideological.
What’s
more, in living out one’s later years as a series of memorable and
momentous adventures, people are making a choice to focus on what one
can do instead of what one can be. And that leads to isolation and
depression, as with my patient Dora.
Dream bigger
So
what’s the alternative? In some sense, having a bucket list isn’t in
theory such a bad thing. The key is what’s on that bucket list.
Retirees,
for instance, should ask themselves a series of questions when planning
an activity: What is my mission? Is it simply to have fun? To spend
time with a partner? To learn about history or a geographic location?
The
answers will show the depth and meaning of the activity within one’s
life, and predict its impact on others. Some of our dearest pursuits
bring the most meaning and joy because they are done for others. Being
mindful of our motives and our legacy enables us to see ourselves as
part of a bigger picture that extends beyond our own lifetime.
Very
often, thinking this way leads people to give up notions of traveling
the world to seek adventure. Instead, they tap their strengths and
become mentors and role models—whether as volunteers, community leaders
or care givers. Though these roles are sometimes discounted as
conventional, staid pathways, they offer meaning and excitement that
adventure travel doesn’t.
I regularly hear this perspective from
the older volunteers at the nursing home where I work: Their days are
filled with life-affirming, gut-satisfying deeds.
Becoming more
involved with family is another option. Forget the one-time swim with
dolphins or sharks and instead spend time teaching a grandchild to swim
or fish. These activities require considerable investment in time,
energy and emotion. But they offer a way to forge life-sustaining
connections and inspiration in an era when there are no longer many
multigenerational households and most of our elders are increasingly
segregated into their own communities.
Or consider taking
bucket-list adventures, but imbue them with purpose. Instead of
embarking on a trip to Antarctica, for example, why not a family
excursion to a destination that will engage children and grandchildren
and teach them about their history and heritage?
Vigorous and vital
This
approach is embodied by my retired neighbors who take each of their
three grandchildren on their own annual outing based on shared research,
selection and preparation. As a result, these children are growing up
with a vision of later life as vigorous and vital, not to mention all
the personal time spent with their grandparents.
Then there’s a
patient who had aspirations for a bucket-list trip to Europe, but felt
he could not easily bring along his wife, since she had memory problems
and was more than he could care for alone on a trip. Instead, he planned
a family pilgrimage to his ancestral home in Spain that included his
wife, children and grandchildren—all of whom got a view into their own
rich cultural heritage and learned a lifelong lesson about the
importance of caring for a loved one with a disability.
Are
such trips as exciting as zip-lining in the rain forest, as a
three-month sailing trip to nowhere? Superficially, no. But look a
little deeper and I have no doubt that people who take a trip to Spain
with children and grandchildren, or volunteer at a local community
center, are much more content, much happier, than the passive voyeurs who whiz by, thrilled with the speed and all the photos, but sadly missing the bigger picture.
Culled from The Wall Street Journal
