The 60s Crisis: Why many older adults feel they no longer know what to do with their days

There is a moment, around sixty, when you walk out of work and enter a new room. The door is open, there is time, there is health, and in many cases, there are savings to make ends meet. And yet, many older adults describe a feeling that is hard to name: “I don't really know what to do now.” They call it the sixty-something crisis. And it is not a whim: there are data that describe it with precision.

What studies say about retirement in Spain

In 2024, the Santalucía Institute, together with SECOT, published the report "Emotional Preparation for Retirement" (Bárbara Rey Actis), which warns that, without preparation, this stage can bring dissatisfaction, social disconnection, and a loss of purpose. The data support this warning: one in five people in Spain reports suffering from unwanted loneliness, and among older adults living alone, the proportion is close to one in three (Barometer of the SoledadES Observatory, ONCE Foundation and AXA Foundation, 2024).

The traditional collective imagination offers two scripts: that of well-deserved rest (resting, traveling, seeing the grandchildren) and that of decline (waiting). Neither explains well what actually happens. For most, the years following sixty are one of the longest and most active stages of adult life. They need more than just rest. They need a project.

Why meaning is broken when leaving work

Aristotle wrote that human beings are by nature active, flourishing when they exercise their faculties in something worthwhile. Work —for better and for worse— is one of the places where this exercise was most easily found: it gave us a schedule, company, a goal, and recognition. When all of that is withdrawn at once, the person is left with their faculties intact and nowhere to put them.

It is no coincidence that many retirees describe the first few months as a process of grieving. What ends is not just a job: it is a way of knowing who you are. The question “What do you do?” no longer has an automatic answer. And then, in silence, comes another deeper question: What do I want to dedicate myself to with the years I have left?

“The challenge is not to live more years, but to live them with greater depth.”

Five paths to exit the crisis

The good news: the sixty-something crisis is not a failure; it is an invitation. An invitation to arrange what we already have in a different way. This is what seems to work for those who navigate it well:

1. Give time to grieve. The first six to twelve months after retirement are a transition, not a failure. You do not have to figure everything out in January.

2. Return to learning. Not to get a grade, but to give weight back to the mind. Philosophy, history, and art are three paths that prompt us to think and read better —and that adapt to the pace of the older adult better than almost any conventional educational offering.

3. Seek community. It is not enough to see the grandchildren on Sundays. There is a need for a conversation among peers, people who are also looking at this stage with their eyes wide open.

4. Be of service. A sense of purpose is almost always reconstructed from giving, not from receiving. Volunteering, informal mentoring, passing knowledge down to the youth.

5. Take notes. Keeping a notebook changes things. What is not named is not thought, and what is not thought is not transformed.

Why Thenomba Senior was born for this stage

At Thenomba we believe that this period of life has its own calling: to transform longevity into shared wisdom. That is why the Senior journey was born — a twelve-month journey, at your own pace, that organizes the great human questions into twelve stages. It begins with finding your purpose (“What moves me now?”) and ends with a return to the world, this time with something to offer.

If you are going through this stage and feel something calling you, it is possible that the sixty-something crisis is simply the beginning of your new journey. You are not alone in this place. And, above all, nothing has ended.

Related readings: the Santalucía Institute report on emotional preparation for retirement (Sánchez-Silva, C. et al., 2024) and the academic article Flourishing at the end of life by Symons, Rhee, Tanous, Balboni, and VanderWeele (Theoretical Medicine and Bioethics, 2024).

Cover image generated with artificial intelligence.