Chapter Three

Aren’t I Somebody?

As we age, it’s not uncommon to look back on life and feel a sense of regret for things we haven’t done or accomplished. Sometimes, we may even conclude that we have never really lived; we’ve missed out on our “real life,” the life we were actually meant to live. In those predawn hours, we lie in bed asking ourselves, Is this all I’ll ever be? Wasn’t I meant to be somebody?

Part of the reason for these feelings of regret is that we often set aside questions about meaning and purpose in life because we’re busy living life. We go through our days by default, just doing the next thing without taking the time to wonder about why we’re doing it. It’s not surprising, therefore, that the questions sneak up on us and cause such consternation and worry.

Less so with Richard. He’s been intrigued with the subject of purpose for as long as he can remember and has devoted his personal and professional life to exploring two key questions: “Why are we here?” and “What are we supposed to do with our time?”

“I’ve always wanted to know if I mattered,” he says, “mattered in a way that I didn’t feel like I mattered as a child. That led me to study psychology and read everything I could on the subject of purpose. And now, after decades of living, I believe I have an answer. As I’ve grown older (and hopefully wiser), I’ve come to realize that I am ‘an experiment of one’ penciled in for a short time, trying to make a living and make a life that matters. I’ve come to realize that, in fact, I am ‘somebody,’ not for what I’ve accomplished but just for who I am.”

The more we’re in touch with who we really are—“somebody”—the closer we come to unlocking our true purpose. When we’re not trying to get somewhere or become “somebody else,” it’s more likely that we feel like a “real somebody.”

Richard’s sense of purpose inspires him to continue working full-time with no intention to retire, ever. “Still?” he says. “Sure, I’m still. I’m still writing. I’m still speaking at events around the world. I’m still doing pro bono work for projects I care about. I’m still growing and giving.”

The path of purposeful aging embraces the awareness that life is constantly changing, that bad things do happen to good people, and that we have little control over many things. Learning to live with this truth, no longer trying to insist that things have to transpire in some particular way, allows us to choose to be the somebody we already are. This is not giving up but growing whole, a conscious acceptance of life as it is and in which each of us matters.

Growing whole means becoming more present. Being present feels inherently meaningful. It’s meaningful because we’re committed to fully experiencing our life—our “somebody-ness”—in whatever activity we’re engaged in. We have the ability to choose, and that’s a precious gift. Every morning is an opportunity to wake up on purpose. Every evening is an opportunity to take stock of a day well lived.

The primary reason for our existence, each and every day, is for us to grow and give. This is what we might call the “universal default purpose.” This is why mattering matters.

Into all of our lives, from time to time, come certain people whose giving helps us grow. They inspire us to expand beyond our comfort zone and become the somebody we were meant to be. Those times may be challenging, but upon reflection we realize that those were the moments in our lives when we grew more whole.

Dave cites Richard as such a person in his life. “Richard’s support and mentorship has pushed me on a number of occasions over the years to step up my game as a thinker, writer, and educator—most recently as we began the writing of this book. After returning from a sabbatical in India, I hit a sort of low point where I was feeling like the best parts of my life were over, that I had peaked and accomplished all I would ever do, and that from here on out, it would pretty much be all downhill. The conversations and interactions that led to this book, however, reinvigorated me about the prospects that lie ahead. Now, I feel incredibly hopeful about what’s next. Richard’s gift of inspiration has made all the difference—not just for now, but for many tomorrows as well.”

While the roles we play in life—parent, child, friend, author, coach, teacher, you name it—are important, they are not our life’s purpose. Purpose is not a role or a goal; it is an aim and a mindset. To awaken, to grow, to continually give, and to make a difference to others—that’s why we are here. It’s who we bring to what we do.

Being somebody means we must remember that, in the end, we’re here to grow to become the best version of ourselves. The paradox of purpose is that by being somebody (ourselves), we ultimately make the world a better place for everybody.

What else can it mean to be somebody?

Questions, Not Answers

During our adult lives, we’re typically rewarded financially, emotionally, and socially for having answers. To some extent, we’ve grown up to be experts, or at least authorities, in our fields, and other people value us for what we know.

But the future belongs to the learners, not the knowers. So, in later life the answers become less important. The image of young people gathered around while wise elders dispense timeless wisdom is iconic but, for the most part, history. Our ability to remain relevant in the world becomes more a matter of our willingness to remain curious, to not know rather than to know, to become more than ever what Richard has modeled for many years, a true “lover of questions.”

“Always the beautiful answer who asks a more beautiful question,” wrote e. e. cummings in his introduction to New Poems (1938). This is the spirit that has motivated Richard’s work and what he considers his own small contribution to the purpose movement that he has helped pioneer.

The path of purposeful aging demands becoming a lover of questions. It means not resting easy with easy answers. Richard recalls, “I was in my late 20s when I began to wake up to my own deeper purpose questions. By societal standards, things were going well. But I was living a default life. I had found a decent way to make a decent living, but I wasn’t heeding my calling. When Carl Jung pointed out that a person in his middle years without a purpose beyond himself was destined to be neurotic, he was pointing at me!”

Answers to life’s questions are critical, but those answers must continually lead to more questions. When we stop questioning, we stop growing. We begin living by default, which leads to what we call “inner kill,” the act of dying from the inside out.

Heeding our calling—which becomes a more important choice as we age—requires that we ask ourselves why we’re doing what we’re doing, that we explore ourselves more deeply than ever. The later years of our lives present us with a unique opportunity for such exploration. And the key to such exploration remains, until our last breath, more questions.

Close Encounters of the Old Kind

The title of Steven Spielberg’s classic science fiction film from 1977, Close Encounters of the Third Kind, refers to the US Air Force’s Project Blue Book alien-encounter classification system. A close encounter of the first kind is sighting of a UFO, the second kind is physical evidence to prove the existence of an alien, and the third kind is actual contact with alien life forms.

We might see our own encounters with aging as falling into a similar taxonomy: a close encounter of the first kind would be seeing the signs of aging; of the second kind, feeling them; and of the third kind, coming to grips with the “alien” life form we have become as an old person. But, as in the film, this third kind of encounter is where transformation takes place. It’s where we learn the most—if not, as in the film, the ultimate secrets of the universe, at least the ultimate truths about ourselves.

In preparing for this book, we’ve investigated encounters of that third kind through interviews and conversations with people whom we and others have identified as being on the path of purposeful aging. We’ve structured those conversations around a key inquiry: “Who do you want to be as you grow old? What does the good life mean to you as you grow into elderhood? And how are you living that life?”

The answers we’ve received to that inquiry have informed our writing, as have less formal encounters of the old kind, like the one Richard recounts here:

“Recently, I had a 55-year-reunion lunch with my former high school tennis partner, Bob Weinstine, and it gave rise to a kaleidoscope of emotions and remembrances. Bobby, who grew up to be a founding partner of one of the Midwest’s most prestigious law firms, and I shared our stories of careers, divorce, remarriage, children, and grandchildren. We identified the crucible events that had forged our personalities and attitudes about the world. I learned of the grief that Bob was carrying over the loss of his son—a hole in his heart never to heal.

“He shared with me his reminiscences of the 50th high school reunion. He recalled the endless ‘organ recitals’ as old acquaintances bemoaned the state of their hearts, or lungs, or kidneys, or livers, or prostates. Information on how to find a good hearing aid or a reliable assisted living space was exchanged. Unexpected destinies were recounted: one former star athlete became a well-known federal judge; another great athlete committed suicide. All this was well and good, but it wasn’t until the conversation turned to death and dying that things really got interesting.

“Bob pulled out the ‘memorial list,’ and it brought gasps and tears to both of us, not only for the friends we had lost, but for those we now would never have the chance to know.

“It made me reflect on my experience of giving the eulogy some years ago for our classmate, my best friend growing up. We stayed close from kindergarten until his final breath. The words I spoke at his memorial service, the tears I shed over his loss, remain with me to this day. Strange how death quickly brings to life feelings buried alive.

“Perhaps the theme of any 50th high school reunion should be the many paths of purposeful and purposeless aging—the paths we all took from the 25th reunion, when we were still ‘masters of the universe,’ to the 50th, when we were more transparent, vulnerable, and aging with or without purpose.

“I left the lunch with Bob pleased that I’ve spent most of my professional life studying for the age we’ve become. Yet, even so, I find the condition deeply paradoxical, filled as it is with both distress and discovery.

“I recall the last lines of Carl Jung’s autobiography, Memories, Dreams, Reflections (1963), ‘I’m astonished, disappointed, pleased with myself. I’m distressed, depressed, rapturous. I’m all these at once, and cannot add up the sum.’

“The same goes for me. I’m happy just to be alive. At the same time, I embrace the cosmic joke that the best teacher about life turns out to be death. At any moment, we might breathe out our last breath; it can come at any time. That closeness to death makes life all the much sweeter.”

The reunion lunch reminded Richard that on the way to his original career aspiration of becoming a wilderness camp director, he ended up here, as an author, keynote speaker, life coach, and tireless questioner into matters of meaning and purpose. His journey to this point was shaped by the questions he asked (and was asked) along the way.

The Stories of Our Lives

Looking back on our lives, as Richard’s 50th-reunion story illustrates, helps us to glean lessons for the path of purposeful aging. So, it’s useful to keep in mind that famous quote, usually attributed to Mark Twain, that Dave’s mom, Ruth Shapiro, adopted as her own: “Never let the facts get in the way of a good story.” Ruth’s stories were like those movies “based on actual events,” with the emphasis on “based on.” It used to sometimes drive his father, a scientist for whom facts and data were paramount, absolutely nuts. For Dave’s dad, details mattered. The day of the week, the city in which it occurred, the actual words that people said, were important. For his mom, though, it was the essence of the thing—the message or moral that the story communicated, what it revealed about the people involved—that was key.

As we age, and the details of our former lives tend to get somewhat murkier, we might move in the direction of the Ruth Shapiro approach to storytelling. The specifics of what happened can recede into the background a bit; we can tell the story of our life to others (and ourselves) with greater emphasis on what we learned from an event and what it tells us about who we are and the people with whom we are connected. Less important is whether it happened on a Tuesday or a Wednesday, or in New York or Chicago, or even who said what, than why it happened and what we learned from it.

The world turns on stories. Sharing our stories is among the most important ways we connect with others in the later years of our lives. But, of course, there’s a continuum, with one end being “that boring old person who tells the same stories over and over again” and the other being “that fascinating elder who shares their unique wisdom with every tale they tell.” We will all fall along that continuum somewhere at some points; the goal is to skew toward the latter whenever possible. One key to that is keeping in mind the reason we’re storytelling. If it’s to authentically connect with our audience, then we’re probably on the right track; if it’s all about just reliving the past, maybe not so much.

Ruth Shapiro’s best stories—and she had many—were ones that revealed her own character in all its odd glory and illustrated her skewed outlook on the strangeness of the world we inhabit. Even when she was talking about her favorite subject—herself—she always managed to make it relevant for her listeners, much to their delight and (often) consternation.

So, as we think about looking back on our lives and telling ourselves and others the stories that enable us to make sense of who we’ve become, it behooves us to keep in mind who the stories are for. Even stories about us are not entirely about us. In telling them, we connect with others, and in doing so, we connect with ourselves.

An Inspired Life

When Tom Schreier graduated from Notre Dame more than three decades ago, he never dreamed that in his late 50s he’d be back at his alma mater, as founder and director of the university’s Inspired Leadership Initiative. But, captivated at midlife by the challenge of helping others to make the retirement transition that he himself was making, Tom returned; and now, in addition to directing the Initiative, he teaches a class called Designing an Inspired Life.

He reflects on how this transpired: “When I was done with my career, I wasn’t done. But what could I do? I was only 55 years old and I was hungry for a fresh calling. I yearned for a compass that would guide me to the next phase of my life.”

Purpose provided that compass. It pointed Tom in the direction he sought as he graduated from adulthood to elderhood, much as it had when he graduated from college. “At Notre Dame,” he says, “we were encouraged to explore what matters most to us, to discern our calling, and by later life, we’d have it all sorted out. Not true, however. For me, I retired at age 55 and was adrift. Suddenly, I woke up in the morning without a compass to guide my next phase of life. Purpose became more urgent for me when I faced retirement. I had to slow down, reflect, and reimagine my life. I had to let go of my prior identity to be in a state of constant transformation. I needed to figure out my limitations and revise my expectations and, thus, my measure of success and failure, accordingly. I call this my ‘purpose compass.’”

His purpose compass led him straight toward service to others. “What intrigues me is to have a meaningful impact on the people who then have a meaningful impact on others. My purpose now is to help people find their moral compass—their purpose—by providing the best tools and mentors to help them live their best possible life. I’m inspired to help people go through the discover and discernment process to uncover who they are really meant to become next. There’s a lot of potential freedom in ‘becoming’—intellectual, emotional, and time freedom.” But, as Tom has seen, this freedom, especially later in life, can be frightening, particularly when people are unsure of how to exercise it.

Having good role models is an important way to discern next steps, Tom observes. “One of my mentors was a colleague with a clear moral compass—Paul Karos. Paul brought purpose to Wall Street and beyond. He helped me understand that even on Wall Street, there is a deeper bottom line beyond the obvious bottom line. In spite of having lost his eyesight and becoming legally blind, Paul has recast his own aging from decline to discernment, from self to service.”

Through his efforts with the Inspired Leadership Initiative , Tom has found fulfillment as a result of his own growing and giving. His inspired life is an ongoing inspiration to others.