Laura Carstensen

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“We’re used to a familiar path of life. You get educated. You work. And by the time you enter mid-life you probably juggle a few things. You still work. Maybe you have a family. You take care of your aging parents. At some point, you retire. And then what? Years ago, when retirement was pegged at 65, retirement consisted of a decade or so of idle recreation. But now if retired at 65, your retirement years might last another 25 years,” writes Marci Alboher in her Yahoo blog on the Purpose Prize Summit held October 31-November 2.

The three-day conference, held October 31-November 2, is honoring social innovators over age 60 who won 2009 Purpose Prize awards of up to $100,000, as well as this year's 49 Purpose Prize fellows.

”But what if that were all flipped on its head?” she continues. “What if, instead, you studied throughout your life and only settled into your true career somewhere around midlife? And what if it was considered normal to work into your 80s instead of into your 60s?”

That was the new social norm that Laura Carstensen floating during a panel discussion with three Stanford professors about “Purpose, Innovation and Impact in the Second Half of Life.” Carstensen, who founded the Stanford Center on Longevity and is the author of A Long Bright Future, said, “We need to change the nature of work. And we have time to do it. We added 30 years to life expectancy, but somehow only retirement got longer.”

In the same discussion Philip Zimbardo, a Stanford psychology professor who is best known for the study of evil, proposed turning our attention to how ordinary people can become heroes through a Heroic Imagination Foundation.

And William Damon, a professor of education who directs the Stanford Center on Adolescence suggested that many people seek purpose in life as the antidote to a feeling of emptiness. A lot of people get to a point in their lives, he said, when they think, “Is that all there is?”

Read more about The Purpose Prize, including this year’s winners.