What if Trump and Biden are the new role models?

Who Do You Want to Be When You Finally Grow Up?

It’s been a busy week in American politics, but this is not a political post.

Instead, I’d like to suggest that despite a valid lament that our only choices were two white old men that Trump and Biden might actually be role models for many of us.

Before you start writing hate comments, hear me out…

In June, I attended my 25th graduate school reunion from INSEAD in France.

Our class keynote speaker was Avivah Wittenberg-Cox, a thought leader on gender and generational balance. She spoke to us about the four-quarter life.

For most of human history 75-80 was considered old and statistically well past normal life expectancy. Based on that model both presidential candidates should be six feet under not vying to run a global superpower.

What happens, however, if the average life expectancy due to advances in medicine and health moves out to 100+. It’s not improbable. For example, in the 1940’s when Trump and Biden were born the life expectancy was just 61.4 years for men, so it has already jumped about twenty years in their lives.

Many of us aren’t prepared financially or psychologically for an “extra quarter” of life. In this model, hitting a career peak in your late seventies or early eighties kind of makes sense.

If, like me, you’re in your fifties, then you’re just starting your third quarter. Why wouldn’t you start a new business, go back to school, pursue a different career path, find the love of your life? What choices would you make today if you realized you aren’t at your peak but instead are just getting started?

I started this blog to explore my midlife crisis. It’s only a crisis however if what I’m experiencing is somehow aberrant. No one would consider a university senior on the brink of their second" quarter strange for struggling a bit with what they wanted to do with their life. Maybe we need to normalize the “third quarter reassessment phase”.

I wonder if I could get my parents to pay for me to go hang out for a year with a bunch of other fifty somethings to take classes and explore third quarter options? We’d probably prefer wine tastings to “keggers” and we’d have to agree that staying up till midnight qualified as “pulling an all nighter”. It’s not a bad idea though…

I, for one, am happy about the political changes this week but I am equally happy to be thinking about my third quarter and all the possibilities it presents… maybe it’s time to get serious about figuring out who I want to be when I grow up. Who knows, maybe I’ll run for president in twenty-five years.