Dag Sebastian Ahlander - Older and Happier!: Inspiring, Amusing, and Useful Advice for Men of a Certain Age

In memory of my grandfather Erik Tham, a truly happy old man

Copyright 2012 by Dag Sebastian Ahlander

English Translation Copyright 2014 by Skyhorse Publishing

Graphics and illustrations by Eva Lindeberg

First published in 2012 as Handbok fr glada gubbar by Dag Sebastian Ahlander, Bonnier Fakta, Sweden

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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is available on file.

ISBN: 978-1-62873-646-5
eISBN: 978-1-62914-003-2

Printed in China

109 HANDY IDEAS FOR LIVING LIFE TO THE FULLEST

A F EW Y EARS A GO I RETIRED after working for 39 years, 11 months, and 7 days, which included seven exciting years as the Swedish Consul General in New York. Now, the time I have left is all mine. Its time for some real after work .

I am completely happy. Happy to finally have a chance to make decisions about my own life and my time and happy to take advantage of the powers within that I have not yet spent. According to statistics, Im supposed to have another sixteen years to live, but you never know. So its best to take advantage of each and every day.

Set on becoming a happy old man, on making the most of the home stretch, I took an inventory of all the positive experiences Ive had in my life. It proved to be a valuable exercise. I found myself both surprised and delighted as I realized that life really had been good to me. First and foremost: I am happily married to the love of my life and we have two bright, young daughters who have both recently married their American sweethearts. One family lives in New York and the other in Stockholm; this is especially lucky, as I consider both to be my hometowns.

I have come a long way since I was born in the little university town of Uppsala, Sweden, in 1944. In 1955, my family moved to Washington, DC, where my father served for three years as a cultural attach at the Swedish Embassy. In my own adult life as a Swedish diplomat, I have worked and lived in Moscow, Nairobi, Geneva, St. Petersburg, and New York. When I ended my career, I was an Ambassador with the Swedish State Department. Thanks to the path my work led me on, I had the opportunity to experience on site in Leningrad/St. Petersburg our generations biggest historical event: the collapse of communism in the Soviet Union and the Baltic Independenceall of it happening right next door to Sweden. That was my lifes big adventure. And, after that, my family and I got to experience New York during the wonderful 90s when all curves shifted upward. It was in this creative environment I started to write.

PERHAPS YOU THINK this account sounds light-hearted, and if so, youre right. As I warned you: You have to highlight the best parts and forget about the rest. Doing so is the only way to become a happy old man. You have to embrace your destiny and reshape the things that can still be changed. Magnify that which brings you joy and take pleasure in everyday life. I want to be happy and through that attitude alone, I think I am already halfway there.

Happiness is having a talent for destiny. This talent is something we have to try to cultivate later in life. Now its your turn to take stock of all the wonderful things that have happened in your life!

Taking stock of your life in this way inevitably leads to a certain degree of self-righteousness. You probably think I sound pretty self-satisfied right about now. Its unavoidable: I am my own guinea-pig for the approach outlined in this book. I dont think its so strange that I am happy and proud to acknowledge the difficulties I have managed to overcome, and that I want to share what I have learned in the process. Thats the very purpose of this little book of advice.

That being said, I dont always manage to follow my own advice. I fail all the time! But at least now I know when Ive made a mistake and have to start all over again. By recognizing your own error, youve already come a long way.

AND ALL OF A SUDDEN WE ARE STANDING ON THE OPPOSITE SHORE

RETIREMENT IS THE last big shift in life. Its also the last big challenge. Knowing how to live was so much easier when the future was ahead of us. Now, its harder, because none of us have ever been old before.

Old age isnt a stage of development, but rather one of decline. This makes it even more of a challenge. We have to keep striving, even though we know how the story ends. This is precisely why we need a good sense of humor as we age, and why its so important to be happy as old men.

There is much to be happy about. With each generation, we live longer and stay healthier. In Sweden, the life expectancy for men is now 79 years and 10 months and for women it is 83 years and 2 months. In the US its slightly lower (76 for men, 81 for women).

We are also reaching old age much later than our parents and grandparents did. Todays 75 is yesterdays 65. At 65, many of us still have a third of our lives left to live. Thats not bad!

BUT FIRST WE HAVE to resolve a few things that befell many men of our generation and that are preventing them from becoming truly happy old men. Men born in the 1940s and 50s found their career plans crossed by womens movement into the workplace. This meant the competition for work increased. Many employers were actively seeking the female alternative. Because of this, about half of the number of jobs that were traditionally appointed to men vanished to them. The result was better equality between men and women and a better society for all, but the individual men stuck in the transition did not always perceive it as such. That situation was and still is rarely discussed. Indeed, it has almost become a taboo subject; after all, we are proud of our societys evolution.

At the same time that the womens movement took hold, traditional hierarchies dissolved; secretaries, clerks, and people in similar types of jobs suddenly had new career opportunities, further changing the traditional career ladders. Plus, computerization led to more jobs becoming stationary and repetitive. Often, promotions only meant a heavier workload and more problems.

Because of this, many older men today are upset that their lives did not turn out the way they had wanted. This is the inevitable result of pervasive political and social movements in our time. While these movements were perfectly just and reasonable, many men experienced them as unfair. The ebbs and flows of any zeitgeist are inscrutable to its contemporaries.

I was personally affected at the age of 55 when I found my job opportunities shrinking as my boss, the Minister for Foreign Affairs, openly stated that she no longer had an interest in promoting men of my age. It was tough, yes. But I was fortunate enough to be able to turn this setback to an advantage by focusing instead on my writing.