Category Archives: Fearless Aging

Fearless Aging

Tribute

On this day of remembrance, we pay tribute to those who have gone before and those of us today who dedicate their lives to peace, human rights and justice. And, in the words of Victor Frankl, let us remember that life will continue to call us to achieve more in these domains.

"Life never ceases to put new questions to us, never permits us to come to rest…. The man who stands still is passed by; the man who is smugly contented loses himself. Neither in creating or experiencing may

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Fearless Aging

Filling Time

By Jim Selman | Bio

I notice lately that a lot of my conversations with older friends revolve around the question “What do you want to do?” This is usually followed by a smorgasbord of choices ranging from recreation to entertainment to ‘just hanging out’. It sounds a lot like the conversations my children used to have on a Saturday afternoon. It seems to me that this kind of conversation is about filling time, rather than intentional or purposeful choices. It is about picking from available

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Fearless Aging

Estimating Age

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

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Fearless Aging

Life at the Growing Edge

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:
  • I may accept life, just as it is, here and now, observing it and experiencing it without judging it and without becoming its victim, or trying to control it. The past year has been an interesting experiment in developing this ability. Health challenges are often an opportunity to practice surrendering while being responsible. We are constantly making choices in life, and some of them support health. Others don’t. When the ones we make don’t turn out to be in our favor, we can be responsible for them or we can blame ourselves for making ‘bad’ choices. Sometimes, that blame gets pushed out onto others, or surfaces in unrelated expressions of frustration. When we can step back and treat ourselves with compassion, we can see that oftentimes our ego (our ‘self) tries to control how we relate to our health (for example, by telling us we’re fine and to keep operating as normal or by making a big deal out of something inconsequential). Either way, our Higher Self (the ‘I’ that chooses and is aware when we are ‘un-conscious’) knows there is another way of relating to our health that doesn’t involve control. Which leads to …
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Fearless Aging

Acceptance

By Jim Selman | Bio

I don’t think that age is personal. I know it feels like it is ‘me’ that is getting older, but I don’t experience myself as older. If anything, I experience my ‘self’ as being ‘better’ than at any time I can remember over the past 66 years. I feel more ‘alive’, more engaged, more present and more satisfied than ever. It is true that my body can’t run, wrestle or climb as easily as in the past. I make love more often

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Fearless Aging

Purpose and Meaning

By Shae Hadden | Bio

The official arrival of fall always surprises me. It’s never the change in weather so much as the passage of time that draws me up short—what happened to the last few months of my life? This year I feel as if I’ve been lost in a time warp while the rest of the world runs ahead at its crazy pace…and as if I’m only just beginning to rejoin the rest of the human race. And no, I didn’t go on an extended vacation or take a leave of absence. All I did was connect to my

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Fearless Aging

The Way It is

By Irene Noble 

My mother, my friend, died when she was 91. I miss her still, yet it was eighteen years ago.  She was a beautiful, elegant, stylish lady. More than that, she was forgiving, uncomplicated by her total honesty, always willing to learn new ways, new directions even though it might require a reversal of old assumptions.

When our family gathers around a Christmas tree,
a dinner table or backyard barbeque, we usually bring in to our
conversation the people who are no longer with us. We laugh at moments
we remember, we cherish the time they were here and, sometimes, we mock
the things they used to say. My mother summed up just about everything
with these words, “That’s the way it is.” I can’t count the times we
have all laughed and said in unison when

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Fearless Aging

Friendship

By Jim Selman | Bio

I am spending a few days with my best
friends—11 guys who get together a couple of times a year to share our experience of our lives and support each other through difficult times or to celebrate accomplishments. We usually meet at Vince’s farm at least once a year. It is a magnificent property in Western New Jersey with geese, chickens, horses, a couple of llamas and lots of deer on a rolling green framing a revolutionary era stone house and two imposing red barns. 

We are all more or less in our sixties with one younger and one older. We are all in business or retired and we’ve all succeeded by most standards. Aside from lots of laughter and a few tears, we spend a lot of time listening to each other. The space we create for each other is one of unconditional love and respect, which generally allows us to express ourselves in ways in which we don’t normally have the opportunity. We are never judgmental, and whatever ‘coaching’

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