The summer hiatus is coming to an end and I now find myself just over half way through the first year of my third act. I once heard a quote from one of the first Apollo astronauts who said, “Without events to mark it, there is no such thing as time”. I think what he means is that as we move along in our lives, it is important to pause along the way and see what kind of progress is being made. Otherwise how will we even know we are in time? What are we experiencing? How are we growing? How are we doing as compared to what we were hoping for? Without such reflection we tend to drift along, hoping to accomplish the things that we set out to do and often, not really getting that far. Perhaps a paraphrase of this would be: “If we do not set any goals, we never know if we are getting somewhere”.

When I think about the years that are ahead one thing seems clear; if am going to make the most of my “third act” I am going to need to be able to set some goals for the future so that I can move forward with intentionality. It’s taking time to consider “the Long View” and asking: “What kind of goals do I need to set in the “short view” so I can be sure that I am getting to where I hope to go?”

I started thinking about this quite a few years back actually. I was nearing the end of my bookselling career and a book came across my desk with the title – “One Month to Live”. I did not really pay much attention to the book. I more or less knew what this would be about: “if you only had one month to live what would you do? What would you spend your last few precious days doing?” This is not a new concept after all. What the book did (the title really) was to get me asking a different kind of question. Rather than thinking in terms of one month to live, in effect, 30 days to live, what if I asked myself, “what if you had 30 years to live”. How would my perspective change if I took what I started calling “the Long View”. Let’s be honest, if you had only 30 days to live there is not that much that you can do. You can make sure that your relationships are on good terms, you could say the things that you want to say, you can take that trip you have been putting off, and possibly a few other things. If on the other hand you thought in terms of 30 years, then what could you do? You could do those things that take time and effort. You could learn another language (or two). You could start a new career. You could learn to paint, or play an instrument, or perhaps even change the world. You could in effect, dream a much bigger dream. And it would not be too late to start on that dream. These thoughts that I had so many years ago were like seeds being planted in my soul and I have been trying to water them ever since.

Now I realize of course that none of us knows how much time we have to live. We could get the “diagnosis” at any time. Taking the long view does not make us forget our mortality. It does not make us live in some fairy tale existence. What it does do is keep us from accepting the idea that “we are getting old and there is not much we can do about it”. I’m not getting old. I’m simply getting older and as much as it is up to me, I am going to reach out for new ideals and find new ways to learn and grow, setting appropriate goals along the way.

One of my new heroes, or better, heroine, is Ida Keeling. This 100-year old woman is out there breaking current running records and looking forward to setting some new ones. It’s inspiring. And here is what, for me, is the really inspiring part; Ida started running when she was 67 years old. And now, here she is, just over 100 years old and still going. When she started, Ida never knew how long she would be doing this. And yet all these years later she is still taking the “long view” and inspiring a whole new group of people to get going. So, let’s take a lesson from Ida. Let’s take the long view and start thinking about what we might do if we had 30 years (or more!) to live.