On my birthday, I wonder: How do you stay relevant as you get older?
From my archives: I wondered about this a few years ago. Not much has changed.
It’s my birthday, and I am thinking about getting older. I have been thinking about this for a while and used to write about it often on the Mother Nature Network. So much of my writing has disappeared over the years as websites were closed, but I archived many of the MNN ones and am going to republish a few of them today and tomorrow. I find this one from 2017 to be particularly timely; I am seven years older, many more of my posts have been deleted, and the last major building I was the architect for is gone.
Watching a documentary about urban issues on the local public television network, I was surprised how much of it was filmed in front of the building I developed 20 years ago in Toronto’s Kensington Market. There was Mikael Colville-Andersen, talking to everybody who's interesting in Toronto — and I was a bit disappointed that he never talked to me (we have met a number of times). Twenty years ago, I was a player in Toronto, but after doing this building, I lost my company, and I could barely get out of bed for two years. I was saved by writing, which is why I'm here today.
The day after watching that show, I saw a post on Next Avenue, a site dealing with aging issues, titled Does Getting Older Mean You No Longer Matter? And I wondered, does everything I've done in this city no longer matter? The research behind the article notes that older people get asked for advice and opinions less than younger people do.
The connection between advice-giving and life meaning is most pronounced for late-middle age adults — even as changes during this part of the life course reduce the odds of advice exchange…. Yet opportunity structures for advice transmission also shift over life course, leaving adults in late-middle age and beyond with fewer opportunities to engage in such generative practices.
It raised a lot of questions for me. Having been an architect and a developer in Toronto, there are a lot of physical remnants of my life, and they are disappearing fast, so this may be hitting me harder than it would other people.
I’m no longer relevant in Toronto. I accept that, I really don’t work here anymore. My buildings are getting demolished, but I think that's a good thing. I wasn't a very good architect.
My online legacy is even less likely to survive, given that it’s almost entirely on the web. I spent a good three years writing what I thought was great stuff for a website that no longer exists, they closed it down and just pulled the plug, and all that work is gone. (And I thought the internet was forever.)
So here I am, a former architect and developer who built a lot of bricks-and-mortar stuff, and a writer who wrote some pretty popular internet stuff, and I'm seeing my legacy in both disappear before my eyes. In Britain, they have the Rubble Club, where architects who have lost buildings during their lifetime (it used to be rare that buildings were finished in an architect's lifetime) get together for a drink of Macallan’s. In North America, I suppose they'd run out of scotch.
How to stay relevant, regardless of your age
In her Next Avenue article, Debbie Reslock makes some good, universal points for everyone about staying relevant, and as an aging boomer I have to pay attention to them:
Team up with millennials instead of seeing them as a threat. Both sides have something to teach and learn from each other.
Don’t resist change just because it’s different. Be open to new ideas, even if that means letting go of the way things have always been done.
Keep up to date on new skills and the many ways now available to learn them.
Establish your own personal branding and market yourself and your skills.
Networking is still important, but it’s a two-way street. Don’t forget to ask how you can help those you meet.
Think more like an entrepreneur, by being a perpetual learner and accountable for building your own business life. Don’t rely on an organization to take care of you.
All good points. My position is a bit extreme; most people don't see a building they created come down, but their contributions to the world are no less valuable and their need to be relevant no less real.
But then Reslock concludes:
We’ll always have value to those who love and care about us. So instead of looking back to what we’ve lost, let’s look ahead to what we’ve gained. Because when we’re not being driven to prove to the world how much we still matter, we can let go and just engage with those who matter to us most.
She suggests that perhaps we should embrace irrelevancy.
Wanting to feel relevant is understandable. But refusing to let go when, and where, we should is pointless. Because there comes a time when we have to pass the torch. It doesn’t mean we don’t matter anymore, only that we accept that our roles have shifted.
I read this and I thought no, she's wrong on this point. That’s too easy. I don't accept irrelevance. I count my twitter followers (follow me here!) [update: I am now on Bluesky] and newsletter subscribers (subscribe here!) every day, relishing every retweet. But then I get on my bike and go downtown and realize I don’t know this city anymore — and it doesn’t know me either.
When it comes to what I did 20 years ago, I'm no longer relevant. But so many of us are doing different things, and in this different world, we still have a role to play. I still get out there and give advice; it's just different advice than I used to give. People are reading what I write and students are coming to my classes.
I've faced the fact that there are young writers with energy and drive who really know what’s going on in ways I cannot begin to understand. They can stay up late. There are young architects and developers who are designing buildings and using technologies that I cannot begin to comprehend. But I’m still learning, still evolving — and I’m not out of ideas yet. And I believe that's what still matters.
I don't mourn what I’ve lost all that much. (Frankly, I miss the words more than the buildings.) Most architects don’t live long enough to see their work getting demolished and I have, so perhaps I should count myself lucky.
But I will never embrace irrelevance. Never.
Happy birthday Lloyd! I'm a millennial who's been reading you for years and from where I stand, your work has never been more relevant. Please keep writing!
>>"My online legacy is even less likely to survive, given that it’s almost entirely on the web."
Don't fret, Lloyd. Many great academics are concerned so much of our present (and "present future") is at risk of obsolescence and irretrievability because technologies change in the online world. I grew up using 5.25-inch and 3.5-inch floppy disks for storing documents; I still have some which are inaccessible because I lack the components with the new laptop to access them (to say nothing of the lost passwords!) I'm 53 and recognize that despite my youth-driven aspirations and hopes of leaving a legacy for future generations to know I existed, it's only a rare few who will ever get to enjoy the luxury of name recognition. And, without having had any progeny to carry on my name, family history, or values in an ever-changing world, there's REALLY a sense of irrelevance for me to cope with. I'm still trying to figure out the ultimate end game and why it's a point of contention for me; perhaps it's because I'm haunted by my past, a family upbringing of authoritarianism that still to this day is impossible to avoid with my 88 year old mother. I have hopes of creating some kind of legacy for myself, whether that's just part of an endowment fund towards education, or perhaps offspring with a willing partner from another country who doesn't balk at the idea of wide age differences. I can only try.
I think that's the noble goal to pursue: at least try, and enjoy the ride in the meantime, doing whatever it is that brings you happiness. Ride your bike for the sake of the enjoyment *without* fretting about how many people aren't doing the same, or how risky the bike lanes are; enjoy the delicious meals that your wife makes for you (trust me, as the chief cook and bottle washer in my own house, I'd love to have a partner who did that for me the way Kelly does for you); have yourself a tipple of Macallan's 12 year when you feel the urge without thinking of the peat used in the malting process. I'm convinced my mother sees life as something to be endured, not enjoyed—so I've done as much as I can to enjoy the life given to me regardless of how little money I've saved or the lack of relevance in my degreed field.
Eat, drink, and be merry—and have a happy birthday. No one gets out of this gig called life alive, so do your level best to do whatever it is you want with it. And cheers ... I'll pour myself a dram tonight after work in your honor.