Resuming thoughts from last week’s post, my review of Options Open by Sue Lantz, this “Guide to Mapping Your Best Aging Journey”, serves a perfect purpose for current times we are living through. As we have been staying home more this year, we have either become so talked-out about how we are seeing our uncertain way in a COVID world, or we are looking for ways to reframe how we still might plan for a forward spiral of change and transitions in later life.
Applying the metaphor of travel planning, Options Open is set in an interconnected “Five Strategy Framework” which charts aspects for the later life course, talking you through your – Health, Home, Social Network, Caregiving Team and Resources (financial and otherwise). Lantz’s fluid writing is methodical at the same time, with each of the strategy areas following the same easy to grasp pattern. Options abound, recognizing that realities and goals are different for everyone.
After you read the information and suggestions, you can readily create your own thought lines for your personal narrative with the Self-reflection Tools that close each chapter; the most practical part of the book. For example, with enormous relevance today, Chapter 6 is the strategy on selecting, building, and preparing a caregiver team. Perhaps if you are a caregiver right now, you are so engrossed in living that, you may not have taken time for what I call your own out of body look at your future self.
As Lantz pointedly reminds us in this chapter:
“Eventually, most of us will require additional help to manage our home, our health, home care, and/or finances. Ironically, remaining independent involves accepting help from others…Often, we think of independence as doing things on our own. Actually, the reverse is especially true. We truly learned these lessons during COVID-19 when many of us directly experienced our reliance on others simply to maintain life’s essentials…The contribution and co-operation of others is required for our survival and for society to function.”
For our mind’s journey (to use Sue’s travel theme), like a tidy carryall bag, Options Open packs a lot inside its compact 100 or so pages. Interesting to me, the Publisher’s Note states at one point, “Options Open…provides aging boomers with a practical framework…” Considering that over the next 5 years Gen X are now hitting 55 and by 2030 turning 65, I asked Sue Lantz, could not this guidebook also speak to this group? Lantz’s response confirmed some of my other observations over the last few years:
“the content of this guide… is quite definitely relevant to people now reaching the age of 55 as well. In fact, some people in their 30s and 40s have given me feedback that the guide helps them to have the right conversations with their parents in their late 50s, 60s and 70s… References to people in their 60s and 70s are not intended to exclude people in other age groups, but rather to illustrate the forward thinking, informed self-navigation, and planning thrust of the guide.”
Further, it would be a surprise to me, if even a 35 year old did not identify with some of the line items in the Self-reflection Tools such as the one for Maintaining Your Health. Yes or no for the checklist statements such as:
- My family doctor and/or other clinicians use secure messaging and/or an online portal to access diagnostic test results.
- My family doctor and/or other clinicians provide direction/answers to questions electronically.
- My family doctor or other clinicians enable access to virtual visits.
(Tick yes to that last one, very timely for me as I have a virtual visit with one of my medical specialists this afternoon).
With these as an example of the many in depth gap-finding checklists from the other chapters, if I might truly say – Options Open, is in a sense more broadly, an Age-Friendly discussion forum. And on that closing note, I rest my case for the value of this book.
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