Joy Sloan Jinks

Dynamic Aging: I Intend to Live Forever, So Far So Good! Joy Sloan Jinks

Publisher Marketing: This book offers a journey, exploration using yourself as a research subject to embrace strategies that will lead to a richer, fuller life in the years after retirement. The realization that ten thousand people retire every day is staggering. People who are above one hundred are the fastest growing segment of society. The implications for health care, recreation, housing, Social Security and Medicare are mind-boggling. Futurists are trying to project possible solutions to the demands these changes will bring. Those who are living these dramatic changes can resolve to be involved in the dialogue and offer experience-based wisdom to move us to the next point of discussion: individually; as a social group; and, as a society. At every transition point in life we have the recurrent dilemma of figuring out our role all over again. We have learned to recreate ourselves at each developmental stage of life: i.e. childhood, teenager, young adult, parent, career, retirement, and beyond. Can you remember the challenges of going from childhood to pre-teen, then teen years, adulthood, career, possibly marriage and parenting? As we recall these times, we realize how much we have learned along the way that can be applied to the next development stage which Leif Erickson calls "generativity versus stagnation." If, indeed, as social scientists predict, we are going to be living much longer lives, it behooves us to model a new way of being that will change the present paradigm on aging. The generation of the Baby Boomers has the challenge and the opportunity to create new input that will impact present and future attitudes toward aging. In the final analysis this book is about empowerment. Empowerment is defined by the United Nations Department of Economic and Social Affairs (UNDESA), as a "long term process affected by and resulting in changes in norms, values, rules, institutions and social relations." As this generation of new retirees determines to look squarely into the face of the present paradigm, see its flaws, its limiting belief systems, its prejudices, we can begin to ask the questions, challenge the assumptions, and demonstrate a new way of living. Dynamic Aging is a beginning. The psycho-spiritual practices that are offered in the book can be a grand experiment in soul work for those approaching these most rewarding and challenging years