What Margaret Wente is proposing for old age, I’m proposing for right now:
The truth is that being the oldest person in the room isn’t as bad as it’s made out to be. And as for that grey-suited power woman, I don’t envy her for a minute. Instead, I feel an overwhelming surge of relief that I don’t have to live that life any more. I don’t have to get up at 5, hit the office at 8, work 12 hours a day, wear pantyhose and take my two weeks off a year with a cellphone glued to my hip. I don’t have to worry about my next promotion, where my career is going, how many people are smarter and more talented than I am or what I’ll do if my boss turns out to be an evil, soul-sucking maniac. That’s easy. I’ll quit.
So what about a more whimsical approach to life? Way too many women I know live harried, tired lives, with cell phones attached to one hip, a baby on the other, enjoying neither. This is, by the way, the culture that tells you that the height of all success lies in wearing a power suit, and going to “the office.” It is very, very hard to shake that. I couldn’t when I started out, but I could now, and I’m just shy of the power suit age that Wente describes as “young.” (I don’t think it is, and clearly I have the mentality of someone nearing retirement, by her description.)
We need to be more free in our thoughts. And in my opinion, the very least free people are those telling you they need the choice of abortion. They don’t have the imagination to see that life could be livable in a different way, more often than not. (Remember, the dire circumstances we’re told about so often are a slim, slim minority.) Not that I blame them. I freely admit I might not have, prior to my current “old age.”
So you have women who go and get abortions because the very real pressure they feel lies around living differently–not that they couldn’t make it work. And indeed, not that they wouldn’t even be happier if they tried.
by 
The ‘Rat Race’, ‘climbing the ladder’ and ‘Consumer Society’ used to be seen as a negative to be avoided but now it seems that they are givens and an avenue for ‘success’.
We saw these societal elements as not being healthy and decided to live our lives in another way. One of us became the wage earner and the other the home maker. I find it striking that while we still have one of our children in school we have no debts, own a car and a house and had summers in our 12 year old van camping in the West, Ontario and Newfoundland. Throughout this time our children were active in all kinds of arts and sports with less than the expensive trappings and volunteered in constructive endeavours in Africa and inner city New York. The time was not easy but it was also not frenzied. I like to think of it as full.
For fear that some might think the foregoing is written as self congratulatory I add that we are not and do not see ourselves as special people. On the contrary, we know we bumble and err. We did however make some good decisions.
As for ‘success’? I think of success as a good choice in the present rather than a utilitarian option that likely will lead to some esteemed position.