Taken from papers written by a class of 8-year-olds:
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,
The word transformation came into vogue as a personal and social phenomenon in the 1970s principally through the success and notoriety of Werner Erhard, a friend I have admired and worked with for a decade. His est training touched the lives of hundreds of thousands of people and generated numerous books and a couple of films. The ‘training’ was a four-day intensive immersion into a smorgasbord of experiential exercises and intense lectures punctuated with engaging ‘coaching’ conversations
By Stu Whitley
Bio
This is the first post in a five-part series.
As a young boy growing up in England, I was consumed with tales of the ‘Dark Continent’. The memoirs and descriptions of Burton, Speke, Livingston and Stanley enthralled me, especially their references to the fabled graveyard of elephants, where the fading behemoths of the Serengeti went to die. Trying to conceive of a place like this was such an effort that it faltered on the steps of my young imagination. The African elephant can live as long as 70 years or more: the idea that this intelligent beast should know its time nears and be drawn to a resting place with its kin seemed fantastic.These thoughts eventually released their hold on me
till nearly half a century later. I was on a canoe trip down a stretch
of the Yukon River known as the ‘Forty-Mile’, where the broad Teslin
River has its confluence. Suddenly, on the riverbank, there loomed the
enormous remains of several paddlewheel steamers. It was still easily
possible to imagine these vast engines of commerce, now in various
A middle-aged woman had a heart attack and was taken to the hospital. While on the operating table she had a near death experience. Seeing God she asked "Is my time up?"
God said, "No, you have another 43 years, 2 months and 8 days to live."
Upon recovery, the woman decided to stay in the hospital and have a facelift, liposuction, and a tummy tuck. She even had someone come in and change her hairstyle and color. Since she had so much more time to live, she figured she might
The whole phenomenon of the mid-life crisis really has little to do
with speed and everything to do with direction. The real question to
ponder: “Why are we moving so fast if we don’t know where we’re going?”
Couple this with the fact that a bunch of us are still working on the
question of ‘who we are’ and you have more of a midlife mystery than a
straightforward inquiry into velocity.
I like the metaphor of a racecar track for life because it seems to me
that, at the end of the
By Elizabeth Russell
Bio
My
first experience was in Izmir, Turkey, where I was teaching English at
Ege University. Some of the time, I took a dolmus (share taxi) to and
from the university. I had no problem getting a space in the taxi going
to the university because we lived at the beginning of the route, but
coming home was a different matter.
The first few times I was
waiting at the taxi stand, I noticed that the taxis coming by were full
and so I backed away from the stop. Then one
During the five months I’ve been blogging, I’ve spoken with more than a hundred people in their 50s and older about their experience and views on aging. The resounding consensus is that life is great and getting better all the time. It seems to me this is indicative of a real transformation underway: instead of growing older being a story of ‘decline’, a couple of generations are starting to declare that the 2nd half of life might be the best half.
Here are a few of the common themes from
I just came across news of a humdinger of a research report from Georgia Tech
about how older people process information differently than younger
people depending upon whether they are in a ‘positive’ or a ‘negative’
mood. I have seen some pretty nonsensical conclusions reached by social
scientists and statisticians, but this is about a flaky as they come.
Granted I haven’t read the research itself, only a description of it which concludes:
"So it shows that the young and old are motivated by different goals and, therefore, perceive and process information differently because of the changes in goals across the lifespan,” said Blanchard-Fields.Now my experience as one of the ‘old’ is