Is Seventy The New Thirty?

Last year, the Today show celebrated Tao Porchon-Lynch for inspiring others with her verve for life. At ninety-six years of age, she is recognized by Guinness World Records as the oldest yoga teacher and still going strong. Yoga Journal quotes her as saying “I don’t want to know what I can’t do. I’m only interested in what I can do.”

Mental Floss Magazine likewise inspired with its article entitled “10 People Who Switched Careers After 50 (and Thrived!).” Writer Ethan Trex waxed poetic about the accomplishments of seniors such as Colonel Sanders, Tim and Nina Zagat, Ronald Reagan and Laura Ingalls Wilder. Business Insider‘s Richard Feloni urged readers that it’s never too late to follow one’s dream, citing exemplars such as Vera Wang, Julia Child, Henry Ford, Grandma Moses and Taikichiro Mori in “20 People Who Became Highly Successful After Age 40.”

Hollywood appears poised to convey a similar message about the advantages of wisdom and experience for those who are no longer twenty-one. In “The Intern,” Robert De Niro plays a seventy year widower who is not ready to retire. An ex-sales and marketing executive, his character joins a start-up company as an intern to the CEO and quickly grabs the hearts and minds of his younger co-workers. In “A Walk in the Woods,” Robert Redford and Nick Nolte are septuagenarians whose characters are based on the bestselling book by Bill Bryson. They hike the Appalachian Trail, rekindle their friendship, evade grizzly bears and remember how nice it is to keep trying to challenge one’s self. In “I’ll See You In My Dreams,” Blythe Danner discovers romance and purpose past sixty.

Notwithstanding those who are ill-prepared financially to retire in their sixties, many individuals around the world prefer to keep working. According to the UK newspaper, the Daily Mail, “One in 20 people still have a job when they’re over 70 – a figure that has doubled in the past decade…” USA Today‘s Rodney Brooks interviewed various individuals who extolled the virtues of never retiring, even though they could afford to stop working. In some cases, the goal was to try something altogether different.