Articles by Freedom in Later Life
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What Do You Actually Want From Later Life?
Most of what we want in later life was planted there young. How to tell a real want from a borrowed one, and why choosing it is what freedom means.
What Is It Really Like to Be Old? Diana Athill at 89
Diana Athill wrote about old age at eighty-nine, and became a bestseller at ninety. What she found is not what we are told to expect.
How to Prepare for Old Age: You Can't. You Just Continue
Two industries have grown up around growing older. One sells you a plan for your money, the other sells you the appearance of it not happening.
Why We Can't Stop Trying to Fix the People We Love
The one who fixes everything is rarely thanked for it. More often she is blamed. On why we can't stop trying to fix the people we love — and what it costs them when we do.
What Is Ikigai? The Real Blue Zone Lesson
The Blue Zones were never really about the diet. What they teach us is something we've quietly lost: connection, purpose, and a reason to get up in the morning.
Why Making Friends Gets Harder After 50
When a marriage, a job, or the school run ends, the friendships often go too — and most of us conclude it says something about us. It doesn't, and understanding why changes what to do next.
What Does It Actually Mean to Live in the Moment?
"Live in the moment" may be the most repeated and least explained advice of our age. A former mindfulness teacher on what it actually asks of us, why it becomes urgent after 50, and why the usual advice so often fails.
Is There a Deeper Meaning to Life, or None at All?
On an ordinary morning, stopped by mist over the fields, I asked whether life has any real meaning — or whether it is just a series of events.
Have You Become the Person You Were Expected to Be?
A chance conversation with one of my students became a reflection on identity, authenticity and how easily we lose ourselves while trying to fit into the world.
Why We Feel Invisible After 50 — and the Freedom Hidden Inside It
Becoming invisible after fifty is a grief no one warns you about — and a freedom no one mentions.
What Kylie Minogue Can Teach Us About Answering Our Calling After 50
It isn't the best singer who becomes the star. It's the one who won't put the thing down. What Kylie Minogue teaches us about answering our calling after 50.
Carl Jung on the Unlived Life After 50
Carl Jung's idea of the unlived life is one of the most useful frames for the second half. What he meant by the shadow, what becomes hard to ignore at fifty.