Mapping your Aging Journey: Review of Options Open

Over umpteen years, my ideal number, working as a career consultant, the most significant rewards came about in one to one conversations, notably with clients seeking new career directions in later life, with the unique pleasure of meeting my oldest client who on the day we met was two months shy of turning ninety.

Rare this was and I wish I could tell more here, but to say the least, his was an adventuresome journey, not without challenge but certainly lived with sociability, creativity and curiosity.

So imagine how startling it was, with all my years of listening to hundreds of stories of later life journeys suddenly in mind, that I began the new book Options Open by Sue Lantz hearing an invitation call in the first chapter to “start with curiosity.” The Options Open book subtitle is “The Guide to Mapping Your Best Aging Journey,” and so serves as an artfully laid out roadmap using travel planning as a relatable metaphor, useful in practical conversations with partners, friends or even an eclectic mix in a Zoom group.

Skillfully promoting self-reflection, practicality and of course curiosity, this later life travel planning guide works with an interconnected “Five Strategy Framework” that charts a course taking you through your: Health, Home, Social Network, Caregiving Team and Resources (financial and otherwise). This is the book I wish I had to supplement all those later life career conversations, when many people saw a road ahead through a narrow lens; eying a fated future as a so called Retirement, almost like a vanishing point.

Book does not restrict itself to the word Retirement

Two positive overall attributes of this book instantly drew me into it. First, Sue Lantz thankfully does not hinge the book on that restrictive word Retirement, which is certainly not a travel planning guide destination I’ve ever seen. If travel can be metaphoric for our aging journey, I agree with Sue when she says from the onset, “Successful aging is a process that involves making several transitions.” That goes for all our trips through airports or train stations in our life course; we are much on foot in transition.

However, it can’t be escaped: reference to Retirement plops quietly in a few places in this book. Try as we might over the last twenty years, other books have made multiple contemporary rewrites to recast the vocabulary for a dated concept or social construct Retirement, while still casting it as a state you reach in later life. Most of these attempts miss the mark or leave gaps that Options Open addresses sagaciously.

The second prominent point to make about Options Open is that in the category of aging and longevity, it is the first book I have read, published in 2020, written with a consideration to the context of a COVID world. In the book’s Preface, Sue positions the relevance of working with this book in our current time:

“Our world changed dramatically during the global COVID-19 crisis. We realized what is essential to our daily life … We directly experienced the link between how prepared and proactive we are as a society, and how this plays out in terms of our individual risks, and whether or not our own health (and life) is maintained.”

Still further, Sue confirms something I have often reflected upon after many conversations I have been part of this year: “… our worst fears were amplified during the COVID-19 pandemic. Yet, if we let our fears stop us from thinking about our own aging, we are actually discriminating against ourselves.” As I write this post, COVID world continues unabatedly, but if you are leaning to a hermit’s way, perhaps the curious pilgrim in you might emerge to make time to explore your options.

If you have been at home more this year, it is somewhat fitting that one of the strategy areas in the Options Open framework covers the topic of Aging in Place. This might be as good a time as any to think forwardly about the right place, and as Sue Lantz accurately puts it in the section Consider YOUR choice of place, “Your best housing plans will be guided by how well this sets you up to achieve the other four Strategies, including your healthcare access, social networks, and caregiving resources.”

Two coincidental thoughts come full circle in my mind that underscore for me how timely this book is and why I recommend it as one that makes you think realistically and therefore one you can actually use.

It was three years ago this week in 2017, that I heard Sue Lantz speak at the National Institute on Ageing (NIA) where she talked about acting like Pixar – “animating aging in place” – animating the options that is, by co-creating, co-locating to build as a whole, what I prefer to call age inclusive communities. As Lantz went on to say, we are dealing with a diversity of issues across the board, which are interconnected. Looks like the concept of her book grew shoots back then.

Most hauntingly, I also recall when in Chicago, 2004 – I heard William Bridges, author of Transitions: Making Sense of Life’s Changes – a book that stands the test of time, (first published in January 1980) speak on “Finding Your Own Way”. At the end of his talk, you could hear a pin drop. The Bridges Transition model is classic and stemming from it is a statement he made that lingers still from that day: “Uncertainty is a fluid state that allows for openings”.

We are in a fluid state these very days, so as that allows – why not find our Options Open.

Review Part 2:

This “Guide to Mapping Your Best Aging Journey” serves a perfect purpose for current times we are living through. As we have been staying home more this year, we have either become so talked-out about how we are seeing our uncertain way in a COVID world, or  we are looking for ways to reframe how we still might plan for a forward spiral of change and transitions in later life.

Applying the metaphor of travel planning, Options Open is set in an interconnected “Five Strategy Framework” that charts aspects for the later life course, talking you through your: Health, Home, Social Network, Caregiving Team and Resources (financial and otherwise). Lantz’s fluid writing is methodical at the same time, with each of the strategy areas following the same easy to grasp pattern. Options abound, recognizing that realities and goals are different for everyone.

After you read the information and suggestions, you can readily create your own thought lines for your personal narrative with the Self-reflection Tools that close each chapter; the most practical part of the book.  For example, with enormous relevance today, Chapter 6 is the strategy on selecting, building, and preparing a caregiver team. Perhaps if you are a caregiver right now, you are so engrossed in living that, you may not have taken time for what I call your own out of bodylook at your future self.

Most will eventually need additional help

As Lantz pointedly reminds us in this chapter:

“Eventually, most of us will require additional help to manage our home, our health, home care, and/or finances. Ironically, remaining independent involves accepting help from others … Often, we think of independence as doing things on our own. Actually, the reverse is especially true. We truly learned these lessons during COVID-19 when many of us directly experienced our reliance on others simply to maintain life’s essentials … The contribution and co-operation of others is required for our survival and for society to function.”

For our mind’s journey (to use Sue’s travel theme), like a tidy carryall bag, Options Open packs a lot inside its compact 100 or so pages.  Interesting to me, the Publisher’s Note states at one point, “Options Open … provides aging boomers with a practical framework…” Considering that over the next 5 years Gen X are now hitting 55 and by 2030 turning 65, I asked Sue Lantz, could not this guidebook also speak to this group? Lantz’s response confirmed some of my other observations over the last few years:

“The content of this guide … is quite definitely relevant to people now reaching the age of 55 as well.  In fact, some people in their 30s and 40s have given me feedback that the guide helps them to have the right conversations with their parents in their late 50s, 60s and 70s … References to people in their 60s and 70s are not intended to exclude people in other age groups, but rather to illustrate the forward thinking, informed self-navigation, and planning thrust of the guide.”    

Further, it would be a surprise to me, if even a 35 year old did not identify with some of the line items in the Self-reflection Tools such as the one for Maintaining Your Health. Yes or no for the checklist statements such as:

• My family doctor and/or other clinicians use secure messaging and/or an online portal to access diagnostic test results.
• My family doctor and/or other clinicians provide direction/answers to questions electronically.
• My family doctor or other clinicians enable access to virtual visits.

(Tick yes to that last one, very timely for me as I have a virtual visit with one of my medical specialists this afternoon).

With these as an example of the many in depth gap-finding checklists from the other chapters, if I might truly say: Options Open is in a sense more broadly, an Age-Friendly discussion forum. And on that closing note, I rest my case for the value of this book.

Mark Venning works with business & non-profit leaders offering presentations, advisory and research services to help in “recoding a longevity society,” finding their fit to meet the shift in aging demographics, and make sense of the emergent longevity economy. This blog originally appeared in two parts on Mark’s blog on Nov. 17 and Nov. 24, 2020 and is republished here with his permission.