Richard Leider, David Shapiro, «Claiming Your Place at the Fire : Living the Second Half of Your Life on Purpose»

If you’ve just received your AARP membership card and wonder what comes next, you might find some help from Leider and Shapiro, co-authors of Repacking Your Bags. They put it a bit more lyrically, using their fire image: this book is for "people who are ready to stoke the wisdom gained in the first half of their lives to burn with a brighter sense of purpose in the second half." Drawing on what Leider learned while sitting around the fire with tribal elders in Tanzania, he refers to his readers as "new elders," meaning people "who never stop reinventing themselves." This isn’t a self-help book, exactly: it doesn’t offer advice on activities for elders or where to retire. It is a guide to an internal, spiritual search for the purpose of one’s older years. Readers who don’t mind the New Age-y tone and the references to Ram Dass and dream interpretation as a source of wisdom may find inspiration here for answering the central questions that can guide them to a fulfilling elder life.