A Brief But Spectacular take on living your best life while aging

Transcript

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John Yang: Ximena Abogabir is a co-founder of a Chilean organization dedicated to changing attitudes about aging. Tonight, she shares her Brief But Spectacular take on empowering people to live their best lives.

Ximena Abogabir, Journalist: We used to think of life in a linear way. A child is born, and you stimulate so that he’s brilliant. All this within the idea or the purpose to have a good job, and then you have a third state where you rest, that’s absolutely nonsense.

My name is Ximena Abogabir. I’m very proud to say I’m 76 and I come from Santiago, Chile. I am a prototype of a linear life. I had been 35 years working in a foundation, and then came my birthday, number 70. I knew I had wrinkles, I know my hair was white, but what had changed was the way people were looking at me, and I didn’t like it, because they were all trying to protect me, imagining that I was going to fall or that I couldn’t learn. And I said, Well, that’s funny. I mean, what’s another with all of them? I’m the same.

And I started talking to other friends, and they all said, hey, that’s the same thing that happens to me. We say that being a woman and old is a double discrimination, because women have so many stereotypes about how you should be and how you should look.

We decided to found Travesia100 (ph), which means the Journey to 100. And the purpose was changing the mindset about the way we were looking at age. Age as an opportunity and not as a problem. When I speak to groups of people, they always start nodding, because what I say is so obvious. We have now 4,000 or more volunteers. What we decided to do first of all was empower other people, because some people retire and say that’s it.

Those people tend to sit and get depressed. This is the moment to be yourself. It’s a moment to do whatever you thought you were born to do. What are the things we’ve done with companies is help them understand who are their new older clients, what we call silver economy. If you don’t understand silver economy, you will probably try to serve older people with the stereotype you have in your mind as older people that are waiting to die, and that’s it, which is not true. You’re missing the point.

People like me certainly we’re not young, but we are not elders. This is sort of new generation in the middle. The other things we do is work with private companies to retain older people that are in their workforce so that they don’t leave, because if they leave, you will probably miss a lot of knowledge and experience they have. Some people attend our workshops and start studying a new career or join an NGO.

What really energizes you, what makes you wake up in the morning with enthusiasm say, I have something to do. This is a wonderful period of time. How can I give back what I have received? What can I contribute to society now, and that’s a very powerful message to be alive. My name is Ximena Abogabir Scott, and this is a Brief But Spectacular take of the Journey to 100.