Don't retire, rewire — perhaps as a death doula

The thing with Dion Chang is that he has always been ahead of the curve.

I remember reading his byline when I was ravenously consuming fashion magazines as a teenager and contemplating his level of unattainable cool with a small pang in my heart. He was always implacably himself, somehow always attuned to the trend vibrations that sweep through society and yet able to remain true to his own vision.

Chatting to him is always a joy because he is always interesting, interested and above all kind and generous of spirit, which makes for a long lunch that passes too quickly.

He sends me a meme explaining that he is in a long distance relationship with Japan, ever since he returned from a trip there, and so can we meet at Obento, a little ramen spot in Parkmore. There we take to their fiery pork and peanut butter signature ramen bowls to offset the cold.

Dion has just recovered from a bout of Covid he caught on his travels to Paris and Amsterdam for his 60th birthday. It seems almost wrong for this futurist to be hit by this vintage condition. But there you have it.

He is facing the 60 milestone with the same flair he has brought to every step of his life. Growing up in Pretoria, he says, was somewhat challenging: “Being third generation Asian and a somewhat flamboyant dresser did not augur well for a peaceful childhood in that Calvinist hotspot.”

He then chose to follow his passion for fashion at Durban Tech —  an unusual career path for a young man from his background. He tells a story of a Chinese carpool-mom’s  head-snap shock reaction: “You’re not going to Wits?”

But his parents always encouraged him. He won a scholarship to Paris to study couture but switched to makeup studies when he realised he was not cut out for couture. It was all in French, and led to the successful aforementioned career as an editor for various titles.

Then he started Flux, his trend forecasting company, 18 years ago. It has been a heady ride, advising corporates on the future lay of the land. Flux is already forecasting the particular flavour of Generation Alpha and last week they published The Future, their latest set of prognostications in book form, where you can read 80 fascinating insights that will change the way you think of the present and the impending future.

But Dion tells me the book may be a bit of a swan song , because this is the year of his “rewirement”. Keep up people — retirement is so over.

“We have been following the work of a very interesting gerontologist called Ken Dychtwald who talks about life's 'third age', because now people turning 90 is no longer that surprising. So he says build for 30 years, then 30 to 60 is about professional and personal development — marriage, children — and now 60 to 90 is the third age. So we are saying to our corporate clients, if you take retirement at 60 or 65 what do you do for another two decades of good cognitive function? And executives we speak to, you can see, are terrified of retirement.”

I have to mention the dreaded US presidential race, suggesting Trump and Biden could do with some rewirement — or better still, perhaps, just good old-fashioned retirement.

“Rewirement is doing something completely different. It’s  of a generation where you pegged your entire persona to your career. So the boomers and even older Gen X's can come out of that career having to go ‘now what?’ But because of the third age, a lot of people are saying OK, well this is something else I have always wanted to do. And in fact I have another third of a lifetime to pursue it.” 

The rewirement is personal for Dion. “For me, I am doing something that I've always wanted to do. But when I dive into it, it’s not something you can just put your hand up for, this is a calling.” 

He has retrained as a “death doula”. 

“During Covid, obviously we were surrounded by deaths, and I picked up  a random article on Facebook about the moment of death and how the people surrounding the dying person shouldn't freak out. You should just sit still and be peaceful in the moment and it really resonated with me. I had never heard about a ‘death doula’. I had heard about birth doulas, who assist with births. It was like the universe trying to nudge me in this direction, and then I had lunch with somebody who trained as a doula who explained the whole thing to me and directed me to an online course.”

We discuss how our contemporary society is not really geared to deal with death in a mindful way — we all tend to live in the present as if we are immortal.

“The actual certification is called ‘an end of life companion’. You learn that end of life is not necessarily just death, it is end of life as you know it — a divorce, loss of job, emigration. A really nice way of framing grief is the change you didn't want. So whether it's a corporate environment and they bring in AI and that is a threat to your job and everything has to change, or your first child is the change you wanted but you didn't realise it was going to mean the end of life as you knew it .” 

What has he learnt ? “If you're mindful of death, you learn how to live today. It's more about making sure every day and moment counts and you don't waste time.”