The Gift of Years --paperback

 2 reviews

A wonderful refrence book

I wish this book had been around when I retired a few years ago. Much of the information was not particularly new to me but having it all in one place is wonderful. Growing older in a society that values youth so highly is challenging; this work help us to keep it all in perspective. It is well thought out and well designed. It is a wonderful refrence book for living life to the fullest.

"We leave behind our attitude toward the world...."

This book is a series of meditations on aging, and as such, there are a lot of little chapters which cover a wide swath of issues. Usefully, each chapter is summarized at the end with a negative and positive "take away" . There is some duplication and overlap among the chapters and sentences, but because this is a series of meditations more than one long "essay", I did not find the repetition troubling. Joan Chittister addresses a number of topics which are NOT generally get touched upon in books about retirement and old age. So many of these other books focus on health and finance. A friend loaned me this book (because I too am writing a book on later life), and I tried to keep from underlining, but I was soon marking and asterisking Joan's pearl's of wisdom, scribbling margin notes, and deciding to buy my friend a fresh copy. I thought one of the author's best topics was "legacy" and the quotation in my heading comes from that chapter. Joan reminds us that later years have tremendous purpose and meaning, and we must not waste them. This is the time in our life when we are SUPPOSED to reflect and think and slow down and pay attention. She also reminds us that we finally have time to GIVE to others and help make the world a better place. As a non-believer, I found some of Joan's allusions to God and faith open to question, but I did not find her religious beliefs to be intrusive. Sometimes she may get just a little bit TOO positive about old age, but not often. Most particularly, her book does not address the tragedy of dementia, a disease that robs so many of the very purpose and meaning she covers in this book. But you can't cover everything in a single book, and what this author DOES cover, she covers very well indeed.