Wisdom in Action

Respecting Children

I had an extraordinary visit with my oldest daughter last week. She is an elementary school teacher in Houston, and an excellent one by all accounts. She and her husband have a lovely home and friends. Their lives are good. What made the visit special for me was that Cindy and I had one of those heart-to-heart talks that parents and children can have from time to time, and I realized how much there is for me to learn from her.

Perhaps this is just me, but I can see how easy it is to get so caught

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Learning

Silence, Discernment & the Art of Listening II

By Stu Whitley
Bio

This post is second in a three-part series.

In our relationships, as with our work, listening is absolutely fundamental to leadership and the discipline of effective communication. This includes the need to be alert for situations where cocking one’s ear to the rhythms of speech, as well as its content, will ensure better understanding. To do this in the context of conversation means to project positive non-verbal behaviour, to avoid being captured by words that we know can provoke negative emotions, by not interrupting, and by silently analyzing as dialogue proceeds.

When witnesses testify, when judges speak, when communities express
concern, or when a victim expresses doubt, we sometimes—often—hear only
what we want to hear, and dismiss the rest. In doing so, we overlook
the lesson of one of the primal aboriginal teachings: to hear the most
important part of the message, it is necessary to hear with the eyes
and

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Fearless Aging

Aging as a Conversation

By Elizabeth Russell
Bio

We think of aging as something that happens to us, something as
inevitable as waking up in the morning. But what if our way of speaking
about aging actually influences our experience of it?      

Satchel
Paige once asked, “How old would you be if you didn’t know how old you
was?” Because he was black, he wasn’t allowed to play major league
baseball until he was well past retirement age for ball players. When
he finally got

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Fearless Aging

My Generation: The Zimmers

Have you seen the YouTube clip of the Zimmers— a group of older folks singing a refrain from “My Generation” by The Who?

They look like they’re having a good time making the point that their generation is cool too.  Interestingly, a lot of normally ageist folks are applauding—expressing a kind of ‘good for you’ (you nice, sweet, otherwise decrepit old fogies). Personally, I think the song and the singing are fun, but it also reinforces a lot of ‘old people’ stereotypes.

Putting

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Wisdom in Action

What to Do?

I was reading the findings from David Suzuki’s latest environmental awareness campaign. It’s a series of conferences and town hall type meetings called “If YOU were Prime Minister…”. It’s a good idea in terms of expanding the discourse and engaging lots of people in an important, even critical aspect of our public life. It grabbed me in part because I’m with my parents this week and listening to

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Fearless Aging

Act Your Age!

By Shae Hadden
Bio

I’m pondering this throw-away comment, something I’ve heard countless times before and never really thought about. What do we really mean when we say someone isn’t ‘acting their age’?

In
effect, we’re judging whether their actions are ‘normal’ and
‘acceptable’—as compared to the majority of people of that same
chronological age in our society. But our assessments are neither true,
nor false. They are simply our perspective, our evaluation, of what we
perceive.

In many cases, our assessments have nothing to do
with age—they simply mask our judgments of the individual’s social
behavior or growth (either emotional, mental, physical

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Leadership

If I Were a Leader

I’ve been musing about David Suzuki’s campaign some more…. If I were leader of a major nation, I think I’d be overwhelmed by all the input from every imaginable camp, not to mention the politics of decision-making and the drift toward ‘governance by poll’. I don’t think there is a centralized institution in the world capable of taking on all the items that need to be addressed in the timeframes that

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Wisdom in Action

New Series: Wisdom in Action

Wisdom doesn’t count for anything without action. For example, we all know it’s good to maintain a positive attitude about life and the future, but it doesn’t help much to know that when you have a bad attitude.

I’m going to start a new section at Serene Ambition called “Wisdom in Action”. I want to challenge everyone to share some bit of wisdom they’ve learned along the way. Submit it as a comment to this post or as a story (see the left sidebar).

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Wisdom in Action

Responsibility

I am fed up with the media’s obsessive coverage of disasters and tragedies almost exclusively in a context of blame (and occasionally credit) for whatever it is that they are covering. We’ve been subjected to a week of ‘windbagging’ about who is responsible for the shootings at VA Tech. The killer’s justification was, “You made me do it.” He took no responsibility for his actions: he acted irresponsibly. We know the guy was nuts and, no

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News

Politically Correct

There is value in distinguishing ‘politically correct’ ways to speak about people who might otherwise be ignored in our collective ‘blind spot’. Such speaking can highlight inequity and discrimination and raise our awareness of those areas where our actions and our values don’t line up—where we aren’t walking our talk!

I also think there are areas where nitpicking labels can be overdone and even undermine the point that needs to be made. It’s one thing to eliminate sloppy and pejorative

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