By Don Arnoudse | Bio
There
is a vitality, a life-force, an energy, a quickening that is translated
through you into action. And because there is only one of you in all of
time, this expression is unique. And if you block it, it will never
exist through any other medium and be lost. The world will not have it.
It is not your business to determine how good it is nor how valuable
nor how it compares with other expressions.
It is
By Rick Fullerton | Bio
For much of my life, I have had a private conversation about dying. It began as a young child, probably triggered by overhearing my parents talking about people fighting cancer or other scary diseases. When I was 12 and our family doctor knocked on the schoolroom door, my first thought was that he had figured out I was going to die. I was shocked to discover he had come to tell me my father had died of a heart attack at just 53. I was devastated! Our family survived, mainly due to the strength and resourcefulness of my mother, along with a supportive extended family and local community. As for me, I learned to deal with my fears mainly through my internal conversations. Never as I child did I talk about this secret and only rarely in later life. Yet looking back, it is possible to see how this fear of dying influenced many of my life decisions and shaped the person I am today.I
got married when I was 21—much too young according to my Aunt Laura!
But my wife and I were anxious to get on with raising a family. No time
to waste seeing the world or pursuing idle interests! In those days of
single incomes and stay-at-home moms, my role was clear and I was
determined to provide for my family. Duty called!
As life’s
milestones passed, my conversations about dying changed. At 30, I was
apparently in perfect health—no evidence of cancer,
By Shae Hadden | Bio
The other day a friend mentioned a term I’d never heard before: neuroplasticity.
So I looked it up on Wikipedia (yes, click on the link and you can go
there too) and was amazed to find out that scientists are now proving
that our thinking can actually change our brain anatomy.
Neuroplasticity
challenges the conventional wisdom that specific brain functions, such
as speech and vision, are located in a
specific cortex (or center). The traditional medical
By Lauren Selman | Bio
I was walking through beautiful San Francisco yesterday, humming
to myself and thinking, "Wow, I’m 21 in the 21st century." And then I
thought:
As I pondered on where to start, I, like Alice in her mysterious Wonderland, began at the beginning.
What does it mean to be 21?
I
am no longer a teenager and people are beginning to look at me more as
an ‘adult’. At this point in life, I can legally go to the bar and
drink
I have been thinking about the process of growing older for a long time. In my 30s, I discovered I had all sorts of stereotypes about old people (which for me at that age was anyone over 60) and that most of my notions were just plain wrong. For example, I learned though conversations with a number of older friends that most people aren’t afraid to die after a certain point—but they are afraid to die without having left a mark or without having been able to pass on their life’s experience
I was in a conversation the other day with some friends. It wasn’t long before we were bemoaning the ‘state of the world’. We moved from politics in Washington DC to global warming and the Middle East, then took on the environment, the media and the latest arrest of suspected terrorists in Spain. In a few minutes, we were feeling a bit of despair at the seemingly endless list of intractable problems, most of which are threatening our quality of life—if not the future of our entire species.
By Don Arnoudse | Bio
In his wonderful book From Age-ing to Sage-ing, Rabbi Zalman Schachter-Shalomi notes that the Bible is lavish in its praise of elders. ”It considers gray hair a crown of glory and wrinkles a mark of distinction.” This really got me thinking. What if we regarded the last part of our life—let’s just say the years after our hair goes gray—to be the “crowning glory of our years”? Wow! What would be possible from that perspective?On my 50th birthday, I
received cards, intended to be funny, about how I was now a member of
the “over the hill gang”. At 50! This year I will be 60. What if I
picture myself at the top of the hill—with the full intention of
staying up there for a good long time? What would be possible?
If our gray-haired years were truly our “crowning glory”, we would:
My
mind is brimming with possibilities. The crowning glory of my years.
Not the fading remembrance of
By Charles E. Smith | Bio
This is the third post in a three-part series. Read the previous post.
Membership in Explainers Anonymous™
is free. We only have meetings if someone asks. There is no email
address, no fax and no phone. All you need to do is admit you are
hopelessly attached to your own and others’ explanations and that you
want to get free. People all over the world are joining up.
Still, people ask me, “What’s the price of my addiction to explaining?” Why worry about it?
So
By Lauren Selman | Bio
I
recently watched one of my favorite shows, "Sex in the City." This show
features four protagonists that constantly prove that 30 is the new 20
and uncovers their relationships in the city of New York. In this
particular episode, the older women were poignantly juxtaposed against
young starlettes to emphasis they’re "getting older". The plot
circulated around the question about aging that Carrie posed at the
By Shae Hadden | Bio
I’m
intrigued by the popularity of online life expectancy calculators. Like
reading tea leaves, tarot cards or astrological charts, many people
seem to be fascinated with the idea of predicting their future. This
compulsion to ‘know how much time we have’ is closely tied with a
desire to re-engineer our lives to reduce or eliminate aging
altogether. As if each of us has an expiry date that we can scan so we
can know when we’ll be used up!
The concept