George Best, regarded as one of the greatest footballers of all time, had a glittering career but was considered burnt out by his late 20s. The effects of alcohol abuse eventually led to his death at the age of 59.
Björn Borg, one of tennis’s greats, led a healthier life than Best and is still very much alive, but similarly had a short, brilliant career that ended in retirement at the age of 27 (although, like Best, he also staged an unsuccessful comeback later on).
Their careers stand in stark contrast to the greats of their respective sports of more recent years. In football, Lionel Messi led Argentina to World Cup glory in 2022 at the age of 35. His rival, Cristiano Ronaldo, won the last of his UEFA Champions League medals with Real Madrid in 2018 at the age of 33. He also won a Serie A winner’s medal with Juventus at the age of 35. Both Messi (now 36) and Ronaldo (now 39) continue to ply their trade as players, in the US and Saudi Arabia respectively.
In tennis, Roger Federer appeared in his last major final, the Wimbledon singles final, in 2019, a few months short of his 38th birthday. Rafael Nadal meanwhile won the French Open in 2022 at the age of 36, and Novak Djoković won the Australian, French and US Open titles last year, in the year he turned 36.
Improving "healthspans"
The sporting longevity of Messi, Ronaldo, Federer, Nadal and Djoković would have been unthinkable in the 1970s and 1980s when a player might have looked to retire at about the age of 30.
The longevity of the modern greats has been made possible on the one hand by advances in areas such as conditioning, nutrition, medical science and data analysis, and on the other by the large incentives to carry on playing (the two are linked of course: large earnings grant access to the best coaching, advice and technology). Both the science and the salaries available to the top players nowadays, we should add, would have been unimaginable in the heydays of Best and Borg.
The longevity of the modern greats has been made possible on the one hand by advances in areas such as conditioning, nutrition, medical science and data analysis, and on the other by the large incentives to carry on playing.
These examples tell us a lot about how sport has changed, but they also raise questions about longevity in our careers and personal lives. As Dr Jimmy Muchechetere, an Equity Research Analyst for Investec UK, notes elsewhere in One Magazine (How science is helping us live longer), there are several therapies being developed that can help us to increase our lifespans. Combined with focusing on our health, we also have a chance to improve our “healthspans”: in other words, we should not only be able to live longer, but we should be able to spend more of those extra years in good health and relatively free of chronic conditions.
In addition to new therapies (which can control genetic conditions, for example), a focus on a healthy lifestyle, including diet, exercise, controlling stress, a healthy family and social life, and getting sufficient sleep, can all play a role.
While this is all good news for us individually, improving “healthspans” is also good for society. If the tools of a longer, healthier life are made available to more and more people, it will mean lower burdens on social services such as healthcare, while it will also mean people will be able to continue to make positive net contributions to pension funds and medical schemes for longer.
Re-looking traditional life stages
However, even if we can achieve all of this, it will also need us to look differently at the way our society is configured. Mauro Guillén, a Spanish-American sociologist and political economist at Wharton School, argues that our traditional model of life stages, which has served industrialised countries well for more than a century, will no longer be relevant in this world we are moving into longer, more active careers.
Guillén explains that our system is built around a sequential model of life, based on discrete phases: early childhood, school/study, work/career and retirement. In many ways we are bound and compartmentalised by these life stages; each stage defines how we are expected to behave, who we socialise with and the products and services we consume. There is little room for a blurring of the stages. “Aren’t you too old/young for this kind of thing?” is a common refrain for those who step out of the roles defined by the life stage assigned to us by our society.
Yet Guillén argues that this life stage way of looking at life loses its meaning in a world where people are living longer (and often healthier) lives and can make different choices about their lives, such as having children later in life or pursuing a new career or hobby at a later age.
This is as much a practical problem as it is an aspirational one. A person retiring at 60 can expect to live another 20 to 25 years and remain healthy for a large part of that time. It makes little sense to withdraw this growing cohort of people from public life or draw on a country’s resources without being able to contribute, either through their contributions to taxes and pension funds, or through their skills and effort.
A person retiring at 60 can expect to live another 20 to 25 years and remain healthy for a large part of that time.
In his new book ‘The Perennials’, Guillén suggests that the old narrative of life stages and generational descriptions, that focus on categorisations such as Boomers, Generation X, Millennials and Generation Z, lose its meaning in a world where, for example, several generations are sharing the same households, people are switching careers in midlife, retirees are returning to the workforce and people of all ages are learning together online.
He says these changes are healthy but require what he calls a perennial mindset – people who are not defined so much by the metrics of age or intergenerational tensions. Instead of using dismissive terms such as “Peter Pan syndrome” or a “midlife crisis”, these post-generational perennials should be embraced for the positive contribution they can make to society.
The multigenerational workplace and home environments
Living longer and remaining in the workforce for longer also means that more people of different ages are sharing the workplace than ever before. While this would have been a source of division in the past, Guillén suggests that these multigenerational workplaces can be hotbeds of creativity and productivity. Older team members can bring their experience to help solve problems, while younger team members can bring new ideas and the latest technologies to the table – reciprocal mentoring in other words.
Consider the example of the development of new technologies and products aimed at the growing cohort of older consumers: younger team members will have a good understanding of the latest technologies and implementations, while older team members bring an understanding of the needs of the customer.
Multigenerational homes are also an excellent opportunity to address the ongoing problems of poverty, housing shortages and depression. Stress and loneliness – problems for all generations – can be relieved through greater daily interaction between generations, and perhaps falling birth and fertility rates may even be reversed if people know they have a network around them to allow for a balanced career and family life.
While we’ve focused on the older cohort so far in the article, it’s important to change how we look at things from the younger cohort’s point of view. The sequential model also places stress on younger people, who are forced to make educational and training choices at a young age, often under pressure from their families and peers.
Apart from the risk of ending up in a career with little job satisfaction, the problem with this approach is that it doesn’t take into account the impact of technology in both making existing jobs obsolete and creating new jobs. A report by Dell Technologies in 2017 said that 85% of jobs in 2030 had not been invented yet. Whether this number proves to be completely correct or not, it nonetheless suggests that a more generalist education, augmented by continuous, lifelong education in new areas is a better approach than simply focusing on one area.
Guillén says education itself will probably change, to be more immersive and to draw from different disciplines. Older students will learn alongside younger students, to the benefit of all.
In a country like South Africa, with our problems of inequality, youth unemployment and educational challenges, there is a great opportunity for increased engagement between different generations to help address these problems.
Returning to the topic of sports careers, it’s important to note that older players in football and tennis have not crowded out the younger players. Indeed, tennis is richer for having older players like Djoković matching their skills against younger stars like Carlos Alcaraz (21 years of age). Football is better for the mix of older and younger players as well. This is a model we can all follow.
The Perennials: The Megatrends Creating a Postgenerational Society, by Mauro Guillén, 2023
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