A Long Bright Future: The Very Good News about Living Longer by Laura L. Carstensen, Ph.D.
Broadway (August 2009)
Today there are about 50,000 100-year-old folks in the USA. By 2050, when I’m a hundred I will likely have a million peers. Can “old age” be a long life? How many of us will grow old with physical fitness, mental sharpness, and financial independence? To grow older and make your own choices seems a good goal.
Long Bright Future is full of tips about how to make healthier lifestyle choices. It’s about consciously living a long life instead of being at the mercy of growing old and docile.
Defining our long life helps us to imagine what we want our wise years to be like: socially, financially, physically, and psychologically. Carstensen leads us to understand what might go wrong and what we can ensure by putting ourselves in the position to make informed choices. There is no reason for us to separate our life into artificial stages. Instead we can put ourselves in the best position to enjoy life values throughout our entire lives.
Laura Carstensen (age 55) is the founding director of the Stanford Center on Longevity. She has given the baby boomers this guidebook as an action plan for living life’s later years with more happiness, better health, financial security, and a stronger awareness about choice and destiny.
I’ve been thinking a lot lately about becoming an old man. Just recently I turned sixty. I’ve outlived my dad by 15 years and for the most part have had a fulfilled life. However, now as older age approaches, I’m focusing on the last third of my life and consciously trying to influence now what my future needs might be. Long Bright Future has helped me to form a perspective.
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