Monthly Archives: July 2009

Fearless Aging

Between Trapezes

By Jim Selman | Bio

I think there is a time when we realize that ‘what got us here’ isn’t sufficient to get us ‘where we want to go’. These times are the transition points in life, the points where we have an opportunity to make major choices and embark on a new phase of our lives—to experience a transformation in how we observe and relate to ourselves, other people and the world in general. I can recall having this feeling when I left home for college, again when I got married, when my children were born and at various times when I changed the direction of my career.

I think most of us face the hard questions about who we are and what our life is about when we retire. I don’t think you need a special occasion, however, to experience a transformation. A transformational moment can happen anytime we realize that we have a choice we didn’t know we had. These moments often come as a surprise, and are often accompanied with a rush of excitement combined with a touch of terror.

Transformational moments are like swinging between two trapezes:

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Retirement

Retirement and Choice

By Kevin Brown | Bio

In my previous post, I mentioned two books that I was in the process of reading, Ken Dychtwald’s "With Purpose" and Don Tapscott’s "Grown Up Digital".  Ken’s book calls us to consider how we will spend our time and apply our life experience in the later stages of our life. Don’s book has us consider the impact the ‘Net Generation’ is having on the world at large. I have only begun to read "Grown up Digital" and already I am reading it from the perspective of aging. While considering the impact of the ‘Net Generation’, I am really listening for "What does this mean to the generation of baby boomers (my generation) that is about to retire and how will it directly or indirectly influence our generation’s impact on society going forward?" Traveling regularly back and forth between Calgary and Edmonton (the two largest cities in Alberta, Canada) allows me to interact with the many friends I have made in both of the cities in which I have grown up, gone to school, worked, and contributed socially.  For many of my friends and I, our conversations are increasingly turning to the subject of retirement. For some, retirement is eagerly anticipated and just a few short years away. For others, it is on the mind, but seen as something that will occur five to ten years in the future. The question that I have been asking my friends when the discussion turns to retirement is, "Could we have a more powerful discussion about our future by focusing on possibility?" One doesn’t have to spend much time researching aging to conclude that life expectancy continues to increase (in Canada 83 for women and 78 for men and in the United States 81 for women and 73 for men). There is every likelihood that, with the constant improvements in medicine and in health and wellness research and practices, we will continue to live longer lives with greater levels of health.  If, therefore, we can reasonably expect to live into our mid to late 80s with healthy bodies and minds, then how will we spend our time and contribute the best of ourselves back into society?  What if our focus were to shift from one of "Retirement" to one of "Choice"? Each calls us to consider very different possibilities for aging. Webster defines retirement as "withdrawal, as in withdrawal from one’s occupation or profession". Choice is defined as "the opportunity and power to choose or reject a possibility". Shifting our focus from one of "withdrawal" (in which the future is defined by our past and we see only diminishing opportunities) to one of "choosing” (in which the future offers endless possibilities for us to choose) creates an opening for action and contribution and engagement.

At the Eldering Institute, we speak of "Eldering" as a way of being in which we are creating purpose and mastery in later life. One of our program offerings is "Eldering: The alternative to retirement". This interactive one-day workshop is intended for individuals who are focused on choosing how they relate to their future. Eldering is a masterful way of relating to the rest of our lives—one

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News

Twitter Scams

Beware the latest form of employment scams: Twitter-style. Con artists are now using the popular micro-blogging site Twitter to lure people desperate for work into work-at-home schemes. Many of these schemes used to focus on making money by sending emails or by placing Google ads. The latest variation is a promise to make money working at home on Twitter. Companies like Easytweetprofits.com and make-money-on-twitter.com (associated with TwitterProfitHouse.com) promise from $250 a day to $5000

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The Great Turning

Give or Take a Trillion

By Jim Selman | Bio

I confess to be among those who have some difficulty getting my head around how much a trillion dollars is. I can remember a book I read to my daughter called How Much is a Billion that was filled with mind-boggling examples, including things like the number of seconds that have passed since Jesus was born. The Huffington Post has a fun video clip visualizing a trillion using the same kinds of illuminating examples, such as a trillion dollars is enough to buy a Starbucks Latte every day for the next 900 million years. The only problem with these kinds of illustrations is that I can’t get my head around 900 million years either, let alone roughly 3 billion lattes.

The punch line of this little clip is that as big as a trillion is (what some suggest is becoming the ‘new billion’), the current bailout is 10 times bigger. Can you imagine how big a zillion must be? It seems to me that when we enter the realm of staggering numbers that are beyond comprehension such as these, money stops meaning anything. This could be a good thing, since when we exceed the limits of what we can comprehend we often transform our relationship to

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Fearless Aging

Seniors A GOGO (Growing Older, Getting it On) – Part II

By Mariette Sluyter | The Foundation Lab

Read the first part of this article here.

As the project began we hit many roadblocks. (Blessedly, none of them were from funders or supportive  agencies, but from individual human beings.) Shock, laughter, denial, repulsion and silencing. This came from youth, middle-aged people, professionals and, most heartbreakingly, seniors themselves. The attempts we made to overcome the roadblocks came from every angle. When one approach failed, we, our tireless

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Health

Seniors A GOGO (Growing Older, Getting it On)

By Mariette Sluyter | The Foundation Lab

Seniors Sexual Health was not an area I was particularly drawn to as a 40-something community developer until a staggering statistic was pointed out to me: oositive HIV tests among those over 50 have risen from 7.5% between 1985 and 1998 to 13.5% in 2005.  

After some thinking about the statistic, my colleague Nicole Hergert with The Calgary Sexual Health Centre and I explored some theories. It was clear that public health campaigns remain largely focused

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Wisdom in Action

Moods

By Jim Selman | Bio

Perhaps the most pervasive and omnipresent aspect of being alive is our moods. We are always in one mood or another. Moods are either positive or negative and they ‘color’ our experience of living, affect how we relate to others and our circumstances, and have extraordinary power to open or close possibilities. If we examine this phenomenon, we can see that our moods are portable—we take them with us wherever we go. I can be angry at home and find that mood affecting me at work or even on the golf course.

Moods are also contagious. Have you ever been in a meeting where everyone is in a good mood and then the boss or someone enters the room in a different, perhaps negative, mood and it isn’t long before everyone has ‘caught’ the new mood?

Moods constitute the contexts in which we normally live and experience our lives. But most importantly, they are almost always involuntary—they happen to us. We rarely choose what mood we will be in, especially when we get our ‘buttons

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Fearless Aging

Learning to Die

By Jim Selman | Bio

Socrates said that we don’t really have wisdom until we learn to die. Cornell West said the same thing in the acclaimed documentary Examined Life by Astra Taylor. When I first became interested in aging and how our culture views ‘growing older’ many years ago, I learned that, beyond a certain age, very few people seem to be afraid of death. Some may be afraid of dying with unfinished business, but we eventually reach a point when the fact of our death is no longer

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Fearless Aging

A Life Worth Living

By Jim Selman | Bio

The following thoughts were shared by a friend of mine on the question of what it is like to ‘be’ older and wiser. I think they express something we can all learn from if we haven’t already.

"What’s it like to ‘be’ my age? Besides the obvious physical changes, there is a kind of release—a gentle meltdown—a relaxation that goes beyond where any mere massage could take me.

  • Gentleness, calm, quiet inside …
  • Infinite space to allow people to Be…
  • Grace to see what is moving and what isn’t all around me … To acknowledge what I’ve sensed and seen in people…And to let it be without trying to ‘make’ certain results happen…or certain actions/reactions occur…
  • A sense that letting go is OK … That releasing what is in my life now will allow other things, other people, other opportunities to appear …
  • Knowledge that being afraid of ‘having nothing’ appear is just old fear … And that since all I have to offer is love, if there are no takers, then it is time for me to leave and experience another life, another existence elsewhere.
  • An inner knowing that what I offer (love) is needed everywhere…and that this has nothing to do with what I could buy and everything to do with who I am being for others.

And much wisdom…

  • That there is ‘nothing’ here to be attached to … That experience is all I can gather and ‘own’ in this journey.
  • That to serve, I must cherish the vehicle I’ve been blessed to live this life in…and try not to fill the energy gap with empty carbs or lazy days.
  • That pleasure and pain are the edges of the same sword…and that I’m balancing both edges lightly in my heart.
  • That thoughts are what pin us down … And that sometimes we need to ‘do’ something entirely different to change our thoughts. Our thoughts are the only way we have a chance to be free….
  • That depths of feeling, time and space, the very air I breathe is as much of ‘nothing’ as I am.
  • That sadness and joy mirror each other in every moment I am alive. Floating like a butterfly in ecstasy and serenely sad at how magnificent each of us is.

Most of all, I’m amazed with myself…that life can be so enlivening—deliriously luscious—and that I am a being of such limitless possibility. And I’m infinitely grateful that I may be able to ‘really’ serve others now…without

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