Our Sun is halfway through a 10-billion-year cycle of mind-blowingly intense light and power generation before morphing into a resplendent Red Giant for another 5 billion. At the end of its life, it will put on a fantastic Supernova display as it ordains a designated patch in the Orion spiral in the Milky Way galaxy with a glorious planetary nebula full of raw material ready for the next star birth.

As a Red Giant our Sun will engulf and probably destroy our Earth but will honour its new status and responsibility as a massive star breathing life into previously uninhabitable regions of the solar system, frozen since their inception.

Don’t panic. There’s plenty of time for humanity to adapt and travel to planets and moons that will support our enlightened lives.

The parallel between our Sun and our own lives cannot be overlooked; we burn super bright for a long time until one day we realize that the intensity just isn’t there anymore. It doesn’t happen overnight, but it will happen. Like our Sun we will go through a middle-age period of denial before eventually coming to grips withour new magnificence and lighting up an old world with new inspiration.

Nothing wrong with cooling down a little after a frenetic life raising families, building fortunes, breaking sporting records and gracing social circles with our pulsating personalities. We’re no longer that dazzling flash of brilliance welding our signature along the steel stairway to heaven balustrade.

Those of us who believe we have lived a vibrant, productive life to this point may be terrified about the prospect of fading into insignificance, unable to continue a driven existence after middle age. If we look at the flames instead of the fire this is a reasonable assumption. Crook knees and hips slow us down. Receding hairlines expose our thin brain capsules to dangerous gamma rays. Delayed memory recall may ruin punchlines and add curious nuances to everyday journeys.

But it’s all still there. We can get around fine, with titanium joints, we can wear hats, we can tell shorter jokes and what the heck if it takes an extra ten minutes to get into town.

We see the flames, but others see us as a fully involved fire. We are what we project. If we consider ourselves to be Red Giants in our Golden Years, we will tap into an enormous fuel load and radiate gloriously for a long time.

We can’t be superheroes forever, but we can be super influencers for a very long time, well after the cape has frayed and the underpants must be worn on the inside.

We can learn a lot from the cosmos. There are super large stars that burn mega bright before turning into white giants and ultimately becoming black holes. Most stars are medium sized, like our Sun, that will burn brilliantly before maturing into red giants and finally gifting the galaxy with the most wondrous nebula legacies.Then there are the little red dwarfs that dot the sky with their faint candle power for trillions of years before just fading away into bits of charcoal floating around in space.

My fiery red beard has long since turned white, and my substantial beer gut has been reined in, but I proudly project myself as a Red Giant. Without the expectation to blind my world with brilliance yet energized with a massive cooler burning fuel reserve, my Golden Years are exactly that. No pressure, heaps to offer to a receptive audience and excitement when I imagine my supernova nebula blooming like a cosmic flower on a black canvas in the Orion arm.

Let’s replace the vagrant connotations of “Grey Nomads” with the excitement and inspiration that “Red Giants” embrace as they open new frontiers and radiate confidence, curiosity and compassion throughout their new realm.

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