NPR's Allison Aubrey just dropped a book that's got me nodding along, and I didn't even have to crack the cover to know why.
It's called "Your Turn," and her big idea is simple: stop thinking about life as learn, earn, retire. That script is old. It assumes you slow down once the paycheck stops. But what if the opposite is true?
Aubrey's a Gen Xer herself, watching her kids launch out the door, wondering what's next. Sound familiar? Millions of people her age are standing at that exact fork right now. Decades in the trenches with work and parenting, and then suddenly... quiet. A calendar with empty squares in it. Now what?
The Third Turn
Here's the story that got me. Aubrey went to the Kentucky Derby as a teenager with her grandfather. She watched a horse buried in the back of the pack suddenly surge on the third turn and win the whole race. She asked her grandfather why that always happens. His answer: "When you can see the home stretch, a sense of urgency arises."
That's not just horse racing. That's midlife.
Once you can see the home stretch — whatever stage of life you're in — something shifts. The question stops being "someday" and starts being "if not now, then when?"
I'm almost 70, and I can tell you: that urgency doesn't go away. It gets louder.
The Curiosity Tour
So Aubrey did something I love — she took a sabbatical and called it a "curiosity tour." She went looking for people who'd made bold pivots later in life. A nurse who became a lead singer in a band. A lawyer who opened a bookstore. A shy editor who started doing improv comedy in her 60s. A counselor who now teaches something called Shake Your Soul dance.
None of these people retired in the traditional sense. They reinvented. They picked up something new, something a little risky, something that scared them a bit — and they went for it anyway.
That's a theme I run into constantly in my own travels. I've met retired engineers running scuba shops in Southeast Asia. Former accountants teaching pottery in small towns they'd never heard of five years earlier. Nobody plans these turns on a spreadsheet. They just see an opening and take it.
Why Creativity Might Beat the Treadmill
Here's the part of Aubrey's research that surprised me. She points to studies showing the biggest longevity boosts aren't coming from supplements or fancy gadgets. They're coming from purpose and play.
Dancing. Singing. Painting. Gardening. Reading a great novel. Sitting through a play that moves you. A recent study she cites found that engaging with the arts can slow aging about as effectively as exercise does.
Think about that for a second. We spend so much energy chasing step counts and protein targets — and rightly so, diet and movement matter — but creativity might be doing just as much heavy lifting behind the scenes. Why wouldn't we build more of it into our lives on purpose?
Learn, Earn, Return
Aubrey's rewrite of the old script is this: learn, earn, return. Return to curiosity. Return to the playful kid you used to be before responsibilities piled up. Return to the stuff you loved before "practical" talked you out of it.
That lands with me. Since 2017 I've been living out of a suitcase, chasing what's next instead of winding down. People sometimes ask when I'm going to slow it all down. Why would I? The whole idea that aging means retreating never made sense to me. If anything, the third turn is where the race gets interesting.
So here's the real question Aubrey's book puts on the table: if you could see your own home stretch clearly today, what would you do differently starting tomorrow?
Maybe it's picking up an instrument. Maybe it's opening that shop you've daydreamed about. Maybe it's booking a trip you've put off for twenty years.
Whatever it is — don't wait for permission. The third turn doesn't care how old you are. It just wants to know if you're ready to surge.
Source: CBS News
Our last article on this: Longevity Isn't About Living Longer. It's About Living Better.
