One of the pillars of my blog is building community. If this is going to be a pillar of this blog, I want to explain why I feel so strongly about it. I am approaching 60 in this thing called “early-retirement”. Given aging family members, I am evermore focused on what can be done to manage the aging process as best as we can. In this post, I discuss why Building Community is a pillar of this blog.

There is more and more discussion in media today on the concepts of life span and health span. These discussions explore the differences between the two.  Life span is the number of years you live.  While the definition of health span refers to the number of years someone lives in good health. 

I am going to take that health span definition a bit further. I am adding that it is about the years that one experiences satisfaction and fulfillment throughout those years.  Things like happiness, relationships and meaningful activities. Ideally, life span and health span would be two overlapping lines on a graph.  In that case, as medical advances increase life span, the line on the graph for health span would trend right along with it. However, often in reality the two lines diverge and there is an increasing gap between the two over the years. In other words, an increase in lifespan does not always translate to a corresponding increase in health span.

I don’t pretend to be in the medical professional.  So I go by what I am experiencing in my own life. I have been spending increased time considering this divergence. Are there ways to keep the two trending more closely together over the years. In my blog post, “Community and the Harvard Study of Aging (link),” I discussed the critical importance of relationships and social engagement as we age.  Regarding quality of life, read any article, book or listen to any podcast on this topic. Most will report that the number one thing you can do to improve quality of life as you age is social engagement, relationships and community.  It would be a challenge to find any publication on the topic that did not have that on the list, if not at the top of the list. I have seen evidence of this in my own life.

So that is why “Building Community” is a pillar of this blog. Including exploring how we can keep those two lines on the same trajectory. Throughout this blog, I will explore ways through community, that maybe we can influence that health span number by our own actions.  Both for ourselves and for those around us.

The first post on this subject is titled “The Building Blocks of Community – Rituals” (Link). Check it out. If you enjoy this blog, please contact me through my contact page. I can send you updates for new posts.

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