People are my everything,
Senses reaching out, embracing someone.
Wanting to touch and be touched—to delight
In each small gesture and utterance—
Finding wonder in soft words
And love in my heart
I remember loving.
Never tasting the Sweet fragrance
of a soft belly in the Way I do now—
Feeling each centimeter of skin—
Aging fingers still capable and Tender
caressing each other until we shudder—
in sublime delight
I am more romantic now.
Vulnerable and open—
accepting love
without
I notice I am getting more ‘age’ jokes in my email these days. Most of them are kind of silly: they’re either about leaky parts or real or imagined sexual fantasies among octogenarians (watching or wishing in all sorts of unusual circumstances, like learning to bounce your walker on a trampoline so you can peak at the nude beauty in the next yard). Like most humor, it is about people laughing at themselves or their situation. I don’t find most of them particularly funny, probably because
Thanks to Google, I’ve learned that Valentine’s Day is so old a tradition that we’re not even sure how it began. It probably goes back to pagan rituals that were later “Christianized” around the time of Claudius and probably “commercialized” by Hallmark. Whatever its origins, it is about romance and love and letting the special men and women in our lives know how we feel about them.
For me, Valentine’s Day is extra special because it comes right after my birthday, which for
By Marilyn Hay
How many people truly listen well? How much more common is it to ‘hear’ what we expect to hear, or to jump in to put our own views forward rather than concentrate on what the other person is saying? Sometimes we make assumptions about what the speaker is saying, about their intentions. We color everything with our worldview, with what matters to us. If we don’t trust the boss, we won’t believe what they’re saying or we’ll think they have some hidden agenda. If we feel vulnerable, we may well perceive threats that are implied, not real. If we have something to sell, we may listen for an opening to put our ideas or goods on the table. How often do we bemoan or hear others wail, “Nobody listens to me!”Listening takes work and effort. It takes
consciously setting aside ingrained expectations or beliefs. It
requires we take a real interest in the other person, and that we
engage in really wanting to understand what they are saying.
The
experience of being actively listened to is so rare that encountering a
person who listens with such focused intensity can be disconcerting. It
is an uncommon experience. When you feel you are actively being
listened to, that
I guess one’s 65th birthday is a kind of milestone, though I am not sure why. Perhaps this is the line between being ‘almost 65’ and ‘approaching 70’! As far as I can tell, like most of my other significant birthdays—21, 30, and 50—they are more symbolic than anything. At 21, I could drink and vote. At 30, I reached my goal of earning as much as my age. At 50, I was officially ‘middle-aged’. This one was supposed to be the moment I ‘retired’, but the fact is I am just getting
By Stu Whitley
Bio
This is second in a five-part series.
Those paddlewheel steamers on the Yukon keenly awakened my sensibility
that all things—regardless of how grand or wonderfully complex at the
time—have their time. If we are lucky, they, like us, will live on in a
sweet memory, rife with nostalgic editing that carves away the worst.
Like
a distant love affair that once seemed to have held the very purpose of
life in its hands, it is possible to be reminded of happier moments
Taken from papers written by a class of 8-year-olds:
the pulverizing, unrelenting surf far below raven’s wings
is a place where the earth, sky and sea converge
each striving for supremacy, now as at the beginning of the world
the ocean is implacable, runnelled by wind and current, its
waves roiled by streaming breakers falling upon themselves
in trembling echoes of the otherwise silent voice of Creator
the air’s rent with spindrift, ragged clouds frown
on the gloomy face of tatsaogitl, the west wind
at the foam-flecked edge of this creeping pandemonium
I came home still a little teary and deeply moved after seeing Peter O’Toole’s new film Venus,
a tour de force about a love affair, albeit chaste, between Maurice, an
aging (80 something) lothario, and Jessie, an angry and unsophisticated
young woman (20 something). I was eager to read the reviews and shocked
to find that most viewers had put it down (6 on a scale of 10) largely
It’s Jim’s birthday today and everyone at Serene Ambition would like to take this opportunity to acknowledge the difference he has made in our lives. Thank you, Jim!
"Happy birthday, dear Jim. As you have transformed so many things in your life and in the lives of others, I acknowledge you for now transforming our notion of what it means to be 65. For so many in our culture, it has defined the age of taking ourselves out of the action and retreating to the sidelines…from being an active contributor to being subsidized by those still working. Thank you for leading us…by your example, through the Serene Ambition community, and through so many other thoughtful and courageous actions to change our conversation of “aging” …and for opening up new options for vital living as elders. Many blessings on your birthday, Jim."~Don Arnoudse"Of
the many thousands of people we come across during our lifetime, there
are only relatively a few that make a deep, profound and lasting
impact. Jim Selman is one of those people for me. He is the dearest of
friends. He was born a teacher. He developed himself into a being an
inventor,