While they rarely traveled, their work guided entire fleets and shaped worldviews. During Christopher Columbus’ time, barely 10% of the world had been charted and a new generation of ships allowed explorers to travel the world to see places (inhabited by indigenous people) that Europe barely imagined.
125 years ago, the world was as clueless about midlife as explorers were about the world half a millenia ago. Life expectancy in 1900 in the U.S. was just 47 so very few people made it to midlife, as we know it now. By 2000, we’d added 30 years to life expectancy so that we expected people to live, on average, to 77. As you can see from this Ngram online search of the frequency of how the three life stages that emerged in the 20th century were mentioned in books between 1800 and 2020, midlife is the bastard child of the three, getting far less attention meaning it’s misunderstood as evidenced by the fact the one word most associated with midlife is “crisis.” (by the way, notice how curiosity about retirement has fallen out of favor in the era of the knowledge worker – check out my blog tomorrow for my perspective on that)
What we need today is cartographers of midlife, the unexplored life stage that represents far more real estate (years) of one’s life than adolescence and retirement. We’re discovering new ways to look at midlife given that the Game of Life board game model we grew up with (a bit of an American propaganda tool) may no longer be relevant.
So, the next time I’m introduced as a “midlife activist” when I’m giving a speech, I’m going to explain that I’m a cartographer helping us to create a new map of life (kudos to the Stanford Center on Longevity for pioneering this effort) and understand midlife much better than our parents ever did.
-Chip
P.S. Speaking of cartography, one of my favorite travel writers (or writers, in general) on earth is Pico Iyer who I’ll be co-leading a workshop with in August (Finding Your Center: Building Resilience to Withstand Any Storm). Kari Cardinale was going to interview Pico in an online fireside chat this afternoon at 5 pm ET, but she’s sick so I’m pinch hitting. Sign up for this free one-hour interview (and you’ll receive a recording).