Category Archives: Fearless Aging

Fearless Aging

Toward an Ethic of Aging I

By Stuart J. Whitley | Bio

About three years ago, I assisted an aboriginal woman elder with a presentation she was doing for the media. She was trying to explain the role of justice as conceived by the first peoples of this continent. Paraphrasing her: first, she said, there is the sky over all of us, then there is the water below. What takes our breath away when we look to the rivers and the forests is the same thing that possesses us when we think about the wonder inside our own bodies. As the

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Fearless Aging

Bravado

Over the past couple of years, I have been growing in my appreciation of just about everything and everyone in my life. I am living most of the time in an almost sublime state of acceptance and gratitude. Fears about the future have somehow disappeared. My work is more satisfying than at any time I can recall and, by all accounts, is more impactful.

When I began this inquiry about aging almost 30 years ago, my vision was that the end of life should have as much possibility as the beginning—that

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Fearless Aging

Unreasonableness

I spent a good chunk of my life learning to be reasonable. In business, the mantra for any proposal was always: “Is it practical?” It seemed to me that reasonableness (and its sister practicality) were virtues. People who were unreasonable or impractical seemed to be exceptions—they came across as flaky, dangerous, occasionally lucky, unpredictable, disconnected, loose canons and, above all, they weren’t team players. When I turned 50, I came upon a quotation by George Bernard Shaw

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Fearless Aging

Emotional Maturity

I was in a discussion yesterday with a bunch of guys and we got onto the topic of emotional maturity. A bunch of middle-aged guys talking about emotional maturity is kind of like a bunch of ladies discussing jock straps—there is a probability that we don’t know what we’re talking about. Nonetheless, it was a great conversation because we all in different ways acknowledged that this area is a seriously neglected aspect of our development.

It isn’t that we aren’t aware of our emotions,

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Fearless Aging

Creative Lives

By Rick Fullerton | Bio

I
am waiting for our third grandchild to be born. In fact, everyone in
our family and circle of friends is primed for the big event—but none
more so than the mother and father to be. Their lives are about to be
totally transformed when their love, commitment and belief in the
future is expressed in the arrival of ‘baby’. 

Birth, for most
people, is the ultimate miracle of life. So it is natural that birth is
celebrated universally as an act of creation.

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Fearless Aging

Relationship Success

Relationships will atrophy over time. Not because of intentional neglect or lack of love, but because, like any ‘muscle’, relating takes exercise. Use it or it will lose strength and functionality.

I see a lot people in various states of ‘midlife’ crisis confronting their primary relationships from the perspective of ‘time left’. This perspective is different for most of us than the one we had in the early years of relating—even different from the perspective of the ‘maintenance

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Fearless Aging

Wisdom and Fear

I heard someone remark that the best thing about getting older is they don’t have to be afraid anymore. While I think that is one of life’s ‘truisms’, it falls into the same category as your mother telling you “not to worry”—it doesn’t help much to know that when you are worried! From what I can see, most people get more fearful and anxious as they age. This anxiety takes various forms: fear of not having enough money, fear of being homeless, fear of being alone, fear of becoming

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Fearless Aging

Souls II

We had another meeting of the Old Souls group—my buddies from over the years who get together every few months to share our lives and experience as we grow older. We’ve been at it since 2001 and it is a special opportunity not only to be with friends, but also to have the kind of reflective space that empowers each of us in our own lives. The wife of one of our members marvels at how rare it is to find a group of men who are willing to be so open, vulnerable and supportive.

I have belonged

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