All posts by Jim Selman

Learning

Poland Remembered III

By Stu Whitley
Bio

This is the third in a four-part series.

The new museum dedicated to the Battle of Warsaw is a compelling place to visit. It opened the weekend we arrived, and the queue stretched around the block. But after being informed of Dad’s participation in the battle, we were afforded special treatment, moving quickly to the head of the line. Serious deference is paid to elders. People give up their seats on trains and trams; seniors are acknowledged in the streets, especially those who, like my father, wore the pin bearing the insignia of the resistance, a stylized ‘P’ with curving feet. He did not wear the Cross of Valour, awarded to him in absentia, for sustained courage in the face of the enemy. This an honour I only learned about recently.

Two days earlier, we had walked the street across from Saski Gardens,
where dad had been dug in. It is a broad roadway now, flanked with new
buildings for the most part. At the intersection of
Marszalkoska-Krolewska boulevards, he pointed this way and that with
his cane, to mark the presence of the German Army behind what were then
trenches in the park, and where lay the heaps of rubble in which he and
his

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Health

Aches & Pains

By Marilyn Hay

Some bodies weather age better than others. In my case, arthritis has invaded my whole spine and all major joints, so my mobility has diminished quite significantly over a relatively short period of time. While I was never much of an athlete, I was always on the go, with energy to burn, traveling pretty much constantly in my job and for pleasure … And then, because of the unbearable pain and attendant exhaustion, I just had to stop. I couldn’t do my job any longer.

I
scarcely remember the first two months of this change of lifestyle as I
spent most of the time sleeping. When I woke up enough to really look
around, I realized I was no longer the person I had been.

And that’s a hard awakening.

There are so many aspects to this kind of sudden and significant life change.

I
had to deal with feelings of grief over the loss of what was, guilt
about no longer being able to do my job (and the relief I felt, as
well, that I didn’t

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Health

Letting the Body Speak

By Shae Hadden
Bio

My very first job was as a nursing assistant in a chronic care hospital. At the tender age of 14, I donned my starched nurse’s cap and white uniform to spend several hours each day tending to those who could not care for themselves. Natural processes critical to the body’s survival—eating, drinking, defecating, urinating, moving, breathing—had become a moment-by-moment challenge for many of the people we cared for. Most had lived in this state for innumerable years—there were few new faces in the wards and even fewer visitors during the two summers I worked there.

The
thing that struck me most about the patients’ lives was the silence—the
absence of any sounds of life emanating from them. The few exceptions
were the ‘babblers’. The music teacher who sang a music only she could
hear and who conducted the world with her hands permanently wrapped in
bandages to protect them from the damage she inflicted on them. The
50-year-old man confined to bed and paralyzed from the waist down with
a libido

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Personal Empowerment

Self-Doubt

I suppose today is as good as any day to write about self-doubt as I grow older. After all, there is nothing quite like fooling yourself — it is the kind of blindness that keeps us trapped in our patterns and our past, rationalizing what we are doing or not doing without even being aware that we’re trapped in our point of view. 

What prompted my musings on self-doubt today? I returned from my South American trip more tired than usual.

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Personal Empowerment

Sound and Silence

I had breakfast with a very interesting man in Buenos Aires named Dario Fainstain. He is an engaging and committed man in his early 40s who is working to help people through training their ‘voice’ to resonate with deeper truths and larger possibilities. I don’t pretend to know or grasp his work fully, but wanted to share some of it as I see it might relate to growing older.
 
Dario was raised singing and chanting in his synagogue. He trained to sing opera and later became

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Personal Empowerment

Staying Open, Staying Alive

One of the keys to successful aging—or successful anything for that matter—is having the right attitude. Yet knowing you should have a good attitude doesn’t help much when you have a bad one. It’s about as useful as your mother telling you not to worry when you’re worried. Advice about attitude doesn’t help change whatever it is you’re talking about.

Nonetheless, when we talk about ‘attitudes’ we all know more or less what we are speaking about—an embodied point of view or outlook

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Wisdom in Action

The Tonic of Provocative Conversation

By Don Arnoudse
Bio

I
get paid, and quite handsomely, for listening and talking to people. As
a Personal and Executive Coach, I’ve engaged daily for the past six
years in the most intimate, often surprising, and always intense
dialogues with very interesting people who are dealing with high-stakes
dilemmas in their professional and personal lives. Part of my process
is to intentionally provoke them. Provoke them into thinking in
unconventional ways, into

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Personal Empowerment

Darlene’s Birthday

As you may know, I am traveling and working in South America and, as luck or bad planning would have it, I am away on my mate’s 60th birthday. So rather than just sending flowers or waiting until I get home, I want to send this special birthday greeting and let you all know what a special lady Darlene is.

As you can see from this recent picture, Darlene is a beautiful and vibrant woman. What you might not know is that she is one of the most emotionally intelligent, serene and self-confident

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Learning

Poland Remembered II

By Stu Whitley
Bio

This is the second in a four-part series.

There is no country more tragically concerned with war, oppression and the visitation of death than Poland. This is saying something for a continent riven by ethnic and political conflict for millennia. It is my impression that war—and in particular, the Second World War—casts a long shadow there, for the occupation by the Soviet Union that followed for nearly half a century afterward had its bitter roots in that conflict. The scars are yet there, literally. In the large block in Lublin where my father lived as a boy, a line of machine gun bullets fired 67 years ago is neatly stitched across the stone façade.

My brother and I went to
Poland with my father to visit the country he knew as a young man. In
1939, he was an 18-year-old corporal in the 24th Lancers, his father’s
regiment. The unit was stationed in Krasnik, a small town just outside
Lublin, whose sole purpose at the time was to support the regiment.

These
days, all that remains of the Lancers are ancient stables now converted
to storage for bricks, and a small museum

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