Is 'Adulthood' Just Postponing Growing Up?

According to the latest figures from the Bureau of Labor Statistics, retirement is fading away. Nearly twice as many people aged 65 or older are maintaining a full-time job compared with 1995 levels. That means that our employment expectations today will be far different from the expectations that we had when we entered the job market, anywhere from 20 to 40 years ago. Of course, these figures can be attributed to multiple factors: the increase in the number of women in the job market, the dissolution of corporate retirement benefits, the economic downturn, etc. There's another factor playing out here, as well: more people just don't want to retire. In response to pressure from the pilots themselves, in December 2007, the Federal Government raised the mandatory retirement age for airline pilots from 60 to 65. This appears to be just the beginning.

What we're seeing seems to be the tip of an enormous iceberg: more people feel that making a contribution through their work is essential to maintaining meaning in their lives. That brings us the question raised in today's comic strip, Rhymes with Orange, where the little girl at the company picnic says to her adult questioner, "I don't know what I want to be when I grow up — do you know what you want to be when you retire?" In light of her question (and the realities of the current workforce that it reflects), I have a radical observation to make here: that, for many people, a career is simply a way of postponing finding an answer to the question, 'What you want to be when you grow up?'

Let's look at some of the facts. According to my experience (and a statement from the University of Washington), "Your career is likely to be completely unrelated to your college major." Whereas your college major might reflect your interests, your career choice is most often going to be based on much more practical concerns: job availability and income potential, for example. Whatever it is that you might want to be when you grow up almost always gets shoved into the background in response to the realities of the marketplace. The lure of the lucrative career, the comfortable life and retirement security generally eclipses not only your personal wants, but your personal needs as well. Could you be one of those people whose personal identity has been set aside in deference to a 'more realistic' approach to life?

When your personhood has been sacrificed for material benefits, chances are that you're 'cruisin' for a bruisin''. What you've really been sacrificing turns out to be your chances for genuine satisfaction. On the one hand, those who are satisfied with fewer material benefits tend live happier lives and, on the other hand, (as recent history has proven once again) 'material security' proves to be not only elusive, but also fickle. Far too many people who have 'slaved' their whole lives to create a secure retirement have awakened one day only to find that well has run dry. In stark contrast, people who were able to identify their passions early on and found ways to align their careers with them, also seemed to find that their passions produced financial rewards. I suspect that what we're seeing here is the Law of Attraction in action.

When we relate these facts to the question of transitioning into midlife, my strong suspicion is that a 'midlife crisis' awaits those who settled for financial and material gain over their soul's work. Haven't those people put the question of what they want to be when they grow up 'on hold' until they've made enough money to feel secure? Begging the question of when, if ever, that feeling of security should actually materialize, when retirement looms, that original question still remains. What you want to be when you grow up is the exact same question as what you want to do when you retire. You can answer it sooner or answer it later but, if you want to find any semblance of contentment in life, you're going to have to answer it eventually. The saddest scenario imaginable would be a guy coming to the end of his life and wondering, in retrospect, what it was all about.

Is 'Adulthood' Just Postponing Growing Up? - To learn more about this author, visit Les Brown's Website.

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