By Shae Hadden | Bio
Elizabeth Gilbert’s Eat Pray Love contains an interesting perspective on aging. For the Balinese, it is more important what day of the week you were born on than the year you were born in. One of the characters, a Balinese medicine man named Ketut, knows only that his birthday is on Thursday and that he was an adult in WWII. His estimates of his age vary daily, depending on how tired or upbeat he’s feeling.
Imagine what life might be like if you didn’t
By Jim Selman | Bio
One
of the central tenets of my work is that everything happens in a
context of relationship—a shared background of concerns, commitments
and practices—what I call a background of relatedness. We may make
commitments as individuals, but we always fulfill them in networks of
relationships with other people.
The other day I was asking,
“What does it mean for an economy to collapse?” What is the worst-case
scenario of the current ‘meltdown’ and ‘freezing
By Shae Hadden | Bio
Several years ago, a wise 93-year-old man named Hayden shared with me his principles for living life “at the growing edge”. He had printed them on cards, in the shape of a bookmark, and distributed them to everyone who engaged in meaningful conversation with him. Today, as I’m recovering from the first major surgery I’ve ever had, I was drawn to reflect on a couple of them again. I’m sure he wouldn’t mind if I shared them with you now:The Gerontological Society of America will be holding its 61st annual scientific meeting in National Harbor, MD from November 21st to 25th. The theme this year is "Resilience in an Aging Society: Risks and Opportunities". Research presented at last year’s meeting led to articles published in the NY Times on Walking
By Jim Selman | Bio
You hear about it and know it is true—the body breaks down as we grow older. Naturally there are lots of exceptions. If you take really good care of yourself, you might make it to the end of the game without any major physical impairment. However, for most of us we’re going to encounter some life-limiting change in our bodies. I encountered my first this week.I showed up for a meeting with an orthopedic surgeon to have what I expected to be routine work done on a torn tendon in my shoulder, only to learn that it was inoperable and that I would need to accept the fact that, for the rest of my life, I will have limited functionality. That means I’ll probably not play golf or anything else that requires mobility or power in the left arm. The good news is that my right arm can still be repaired.
What was interesting to me was to watch
The Second Annual Positive Aging Conference will be taking place November 12, 2008 in Minneapolis. The conference intends to promote a national conversation around positive aging, and will share important tools and resources for exploring purpose, vitality and meaning in the second half of life. This day-long event, featuring world-renowned experts and authors including Richard Bolles
By Jim Selman | Bio
I’ve been thinking about aging and
observing the human phenomenon for a long time and I know that most of
the chatter in my head isn’t ‘me’—it’s just the tapes of my past and my
ego playing the tune to which my culture expects me to dance. For
example, I believe and know from experience that the key to health and wellbeing is “participation”—staying
engaged in whatever games I choose to play. Yet, that little voice
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By Jim Selman | Bio
It’s getting hard to stay ‘upbeat’ in the face of all the economic news. The line between a recession and depression is blurring more and more each day. It seems pretty obvious that we’re entering what will be a long road to some sort of prosperity. The old joke about a recession is when your neighbor loses his or her job and a depression is when you lose your job isn’t so funny anymore. I learned today that China is embarking on an official policy of selling directly
By Jim Selman | Bio
Think about the positive attributes of growing older, and ‘wisdom’ will always appear near the top of the list. Until recently, I had assumed ‘wisdom’ was a kind of ‘right knowledge’. Every time someone says the Serenity Prayer, I am reminded of this attribute again.“God grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, the courage to change the things that I can, and the wisdom to know the difference.”
I wonder if I do know the difference.
On one level, I have learned a degree of serenity and think I am more or less accepting of most things in life. Yet I still fret about our political leadership, the drift toward corporate oligarchy, the environment, TV programming, traffic and a hundred other things that I think should be