THE HOLISTIC LAWYER

The old gray mare, she ain’t
what she used to be, many long years ago.

(Song from childhood)

My daughter Alexis and I have started a habit of power walking several times a week. It’s a fun way to get some great exercise. We walk and talk with gusto – at least we do until she brings up a subject on which I feel I have experience to share.

Then the lively conversation stalls, as she informs me with exasperation that she doesn’t need my opinion because she’s already looked it up on the internet! At this point I often decide not to waste my breath. But sometimes I foolishly persist, trying to help her with my unwanted advice. Of course, she is totally unappreciative of my pearls of wisdom.

Why is youth wasted on the young?

It’s all right though, because we don’t want it. People in my generation are really where the action is. Baby Boomers rock!

A New Stage of Life

Just ask Ken Dychtwald. Ken Dychtwald is a psychologist-gerontologist-yoga practitioner turned author-speaker-consultant-demographer-futurist-entrepreneur-self-help guru, who speaks to major corporations across the country about what he calls “middlescence.” Middlescence is a whole new multi-decade stage of life, between 50 and 70, that offers rich opportunities for reinvention and exploration.

If you think he is artificially creating this stage of life, keep in mind that the term “adolescence,” a word we now take for granted, didn’t exist a century ago. People went from being a child to an adult overnight.

Unlike our counterparts in “adolescence,” however, those of us in middlescence have the benefit of experience and hard-earned wisdom. As a result, we can make better choices and we already know what we don’t want. Not to mention that, as the Boomer generation, there are a lot more of us around than the 20 and 30-somethings. So we definitely carry weight.

At 55, Dychtwald refers to aging as a “blast” and says that the longevity revolution will have a bigger impact on people’s lives, on their family, their money and their work than either the industrial or technological revolutions of previous centuries.

Boomers Rule

Did you know that two-thirds of all the people who have lived past 65 are alive today? Moreover, according to Dychtwald, the 50-plus generation has 70 percent of all the wealth, 80 percent of all the money in savings and loans and invests 66 percent of every dollar in the equity markets. So, he asks, tongue-in-cheek, how come they’re getting all the discounts?

I love his approach of seeing Baby Boomers as a rich natural resource and I see the trend myself in my practice. I have women clients in their 50’s and 60’s who are gorgeous. They take care of themselves; mind, body and spirit; and it shows. (Women, by the way, will control 60 percent of the wealth in America by 2010.) I have men clients who are equally fit, active and healthy, into their 50’s and beyond. We are definitely a different generation from the past, when alcohol and cigarettes were a mainstay of daily life.

When I was pregnant with my twins, some 20 years ago, I refused to accept the then-prevailing wisdom that having children caused you to “lose your figure.” I worked out throughout my pregnancy and discovered a line of clothing (called “Woman’s Work”) that featured attractive business suits for pregnant women rather than simply the tent-like top that said “Baby in the Oven.” I wasn’t the only one who believed there was life after childbirth and today many of my friends and clients are in great shape, despite having had children.

The Boomers are also the first to reject what Dychtwald calls a linear view of life: Get born, go to school, go to work, rest, then die. The traditional view of retirement as consisting of golf and rocking on your front porch is gone and in fact even the average age for retirement has increased to 73 according to Fortune magazine. We are now choosing a cyclic approach to life, in which some of us return to school in midlife, try a brand new career, travel and then repeat the process in a different field. Some of us are constantly learning and growing through seminars, workshops and individual study. We are dynamic!

We are always at the perfect age and it is so gratifying to see that this wisdom is being recognized by an entire generation. Even though advertising still focuses on youth, increasingly we are seeing mature models and more “real” people in ads. We have the power to change the advertising industry by making our preferences known.

Our Inner World Creates Our Outer World

I believe that my generation’s awareness of spirituality and being part of the greater whole is a big factor in our awareness of who we are and our confidence about expressing it. I feel blessed to be a part of the Boomer generation and excited about moving into my “power years,” as Dychtwald calls them in his book, The Power Years. The book offers advice on the many aspects of the silver years, including relationship advice based on his 22-year marriage to his wife and business partner, Maddy.

I was fascinated to learn that the pair have been married 22 times, once each year, in a different ceremony. Ranging from traditional to Buddhist to a Mayan ceremony atop the Chichén Itzá pyramid, a Hopi wedding in Sedona, Arizona and in the nude in a Tai Chi ritual at Esalen. It’s clear that with these two the honeymoon is never over! What a refreshing and vibrant way to look at marriage.

The universal wisdom remains true: What we send out comes back and what we believe about ourselves becomes true for us. As we Baby Boomers move into the next level of life, we have decided that we want to change the world for the better. We are determined that our lives will continue to be a rich, exciting adventure. As a group, the Boomers are loving and powerful. And whether the 20-somethings realize it or not, we rule. And so it is.

© 2005 Mindy L. Hitchcock.
All Rights Reserved

Mindy L. Hitchcock is a family law attorney with 19 years experience. She is certified in collaborative law and the collaborative law team approach, a board member of the International Alliance of Holistic Lawyers (IAHL), member of the Collaborative Law Institute of Michigan and a member of the Human Rights Campaign. She is a writer and speaker and maintains two websites, LADY4JUSTICE PLLC, www.lady4justice.com and Mindy’s Access Power Center, www.mindyhitchcock.com. She can be reached at mlhitchcock@lady4justice.com.