Conclusions

Only ten percent of participants in the survey felt life was designed to get better and that aging was good because they have something to look forward to. Everyone in this group was already over sixty-five, so we might suppose they were rationalizing their situation, or perhaps this time in their lives was the best that they had experienced. This group looked forward to being grandparents, reading, traveling, gardening, and other things they wanted to do. I strongly feel that, as pleasant as those activities are, they are not synonymous with development and growth.

On the other hand, if we add up the other percentages on the graph, we can see that almost ninety percent of all people interviewed characterized life as a process, which after fifty or sixty years has more negative aspects associated with it than positive — a decline of body and mind, health issues, and financial dependency. For these participating individuals, their physical vitality and mental sharpness seemed to be more important than having free time. Simply doing activities that do not generate anticipation and excitement defeats the purpose and potential that life holds for us at the latter stages.

None of the groups considered that the most exciting stage of development, the one that has the greatest potential for achieving true satisfaction — developing power, effectiveness, mission, passion, connection, fame, and even fortune (all of which can stem from our becoming more aware and better at envisioning, communicating, and behaving unconditionally) — is the last stage of life after forty or fifty.

This last stage of development starts at approximately forty to fifty years of age and can continue until death! Within our developed self lies the answer to the question, What is my life’s purpose, and do I have all of the tools necessary to carry out that purpose? Only when we come into the knowledge of our life’s purpose and find ourselves engaged in pursuing it successfully do we come close to the satisfaction we are all entitled to. I believe in order to manifest true satisfaction, we must discover and achieve our life’s purpose, and we can only do this if our self is fully developed.