Me, I’m not so ambitious — or perhaps I should say I’m nowhere near as ambitious as I was at her age (Sandberg is 43). So when Time Magazine puts her on the cover with the line “Don’t hate her because she’s successful,” I have no problem admiring her achievements without envy.

But I sure know where Sandberg is coming from. As a lifelong practitioner of the mealy-mouthed “This may be a stupid idea, but…” style of presenting ideas in meetings, I applaud her drive to move the women of her generation beyond such deference. (Okay, beyond such wimpitude.)

What Sandberg can’t know yet is that the ideal of Having It All will not be a lifelong concern. Many women — and men! — of my generation have shifted their priorities to Having Enough. I don’t mean just financially (though that would be nice): I mean having enough adventure and engagement in the world, enough intimacy in the bedroom, enough good health in everyday life.

Oh, and enough meaningful work. In 2006 I got involved with an outfit called Encore.org that supports older workers seeking “purpose, passion and a paycheck.” That mellow outlook could be the perfect complement to Sandberg’s get-ahead game-plan of promotions, prestige and power: People who are comfortable with their level of advancement can keep an organization grounded, freeing the risk-takers and go-getters to do their thing. In the workplace Sandberg is discussing, regrettably, that kind of teamwork has yet to be recognized.

So people of all ages would benefit from changes in How We Work Now. In that respect, Lean In is not, as Anne-Marie Slaughter put it in The New York Times, “a young woman’s book.” Sandberg says she’s trying to empower corporate leaders to enact family-friendly options such as flexible work schedules (take that, Yahoo CEO Marissa Mayer!) and paid leave for caregivers. Such accommodations to real life would make it possible for all of us — young and older, ambitious and leaning back, those seeking balance and those striving for one bright goal — to give our all.

The payoff? The satisfaction of Having Enough of It All.

Childhood friends are in a unique position to facilitate that process; they knew you back before you knew yourself.  The turmoil of those first friendships were your first experiences in loyalty, betrayal, daring, intimacy. Furthermore, they are living fact-checkers on the personal narrative you have learned by heart. Your old friends can fill in gaps, offer a different perspective on events, and remind you how much fun you had, as they best-friend you all over again.

A longing for authentication sends us to Facebook and Google and even to looking someone up when you are passing through the town they live in. Or, possibly signing up for a class reunion.  Why now?

•  To see how they turned out, especially the ones you admired or loved or hated.
•  To get a perspective on how you turned out.
• To sit at your “regular” table in the dining room and share silly stories of foolishness or daring that only you and they remember. And giggle the way you haven’t for decades.
• To cast a wistful glance back to those feisty, funny, energetic kids you were.
• To reminisce about your parents and siblings with people who actually knew them, and knew them the way they were when your family was shaping your life. Who else in the world knows what your childhood bedroom looked like? What was kept in the refrigerator for after-school snacks?
• To catch up on “gossip” — which really means the successes and comeuppances, the highs and tragedies that befell those, including you, who had no idea what was to come or how they would cope. Reunions are for gathering life stories about how your youthful contemporaries have made it to now –or not.
• To be stunned by who has died and under what circumstances. And for a moment to glance at your own mortality before moving on.
• To straighten a few things out. To apologize for the time you played a trick on Sally, an event you have regretted it all your life. To ask Tom why he canceled the camping trip you planned. To ask Jane why she never stayed in touch.
• To make new connections. Since you are starting from a unique familiarity, the re-friendships or new friendships that emerge from that common ground and move forward have a very special combination of depth and freshness.
• And, of course, To see how old or fat they look.  The irony is that within minutes you can’t tell. As soon you are into the first sentence of a conversation, they look to you exactly as they did when last you saw each other.

That is the miracle of childhood friends; they will always be there as witness to the past and reflection of our own life trajectory.

The problem is that now that my dream trip is an option, I am stunned to discover that my wish list is outdated.  Conventional wisdom states that the years after adulthood and before old age are when you are able to do some of the things you “always wanted to do.”  Besides travel, the list often includes: learn a language, read serious books, play tennis (or golf or pick-up basketball), or establish a regular poker game. So you are surprised when, given the opportunity, you don’t want to do any of it. But, why?

This new stage of life is less about doing what you have always wanted to do and more about becoming who you really are. That wish list was composed by the person who had roles to fulfill and responsibilities to live up to.

Those days are gone. But because we are pioneers in the new stage of life — referred to as the encore stage — we have no guides or role models.  We also have no prescribed standards to measure up to. Navigating this experience is much more challenging than learning a new language.

Revising our priorities and expectations to suit our encore selves can shake up our behavior and shock not only ourselves, but our friends and especially our children.

Here are just some of the areas in which all bets are off:

1. Friends. As your needs and interests shift, there may be friends who slip from the inner circle; you still love them, but they are not whom you want to hang out with. Other friends may become more interesting or compatible, and making new friends may become a high priority.
2. Work.  Whether work is what you do primarily to make a living, a major part of who you are, or even if it is a burden you can’t wait to escape, your relationship with it may change. For one thing, the drive that got you where you are is abating; instead many people long for more meaning, even if that means cutting back on material things. By the same token, many women in particular, find themselves more committed to their work now that they no longer have to balance it against other demands.
3. Food, drink, and pastimes. What used to look like fun or the way you relaxed may become less interesting — perhaps because you are already more relaxed now. Finding out what it is that really gets you going may not be easy. That’s why it is important to give yourself a little slack when the second or third project you try doesn’t hold your attention.
4. Yourself. It may take a while to get used to the unexpected behavior or interests that come over you.  For women, the hardest shift may be from caregiving to care-getting. Gloria Steinem calls for a new golden rule: “Do unto yourself as you have been doing unto others.”  For men, the stumbling block can be the shift from being what you do to being who you are. After years of focusing on the road ahead, it takes a while to reactivate your peripheral vision.

Getting older isn’t about taking who you have always been to the next stage, it is about reconsidering the elements of your life so far and deciding what you are going to do for an encore.

Photo Credit: Arias Levhita