I had a great meeting with David Korten yesterday. He is the very
inspiring thought-leader I mentioned in a past blog and the author of The Great Turning.
His vision of some of the underlying issues that perpetuate the
persistence of many of the world’s nastiest problems is brilliant and
offers a framework for creating a ‘new story’ of who we are and what’s
possible.
Part
of his vision and mine is for our whole generation to declare our
responsibility for the world and become
By Lilly Page
As I continue to follow my passion, helping people ‘feel’ beautiful, I’ve come to notice that beauty and self-image are one and the same. The journey to real beauty is an interesting path of self-appreciation.Many
women and men ask for my help to ‘look’ more beautiful. These
individuals have often felt a prompting to change their behavior, even
more so than their look. They are beginning to see the possibilities in
themselves and just need a little encouragement to ‘be’ themselves, to
fully express who they are. Whether they receive an image make-over as
a gift or whether they ‘gift’ themselves, the inspiration usually comes
from a
The following thoughts were shared by a friend of mine on the
question of what it is like to ‘be’ older and wiser. I think they
express something we can all learn from if we haven’t already.
“What’s
it like to ‘be’ my age? Besides the obvious physical changes, there is
a kind of release—a gentle meltdown—a relaxation that goes beyond where
any mere massage could take me.
Much wisdom…
Most of all, I’m amazed with myself…that life can be so
enlivening–deliriously
Well, today is the first day of Hanukkah (sometimes transliterated
as Chanukkah), the Festival of Lights or Rededication. It is the
midpoint in the season between Thanksgiving and New Year—the long
Holiday Haul. Not only do we consume a lot, but it also consumes a lot
of us.
The
usual litany of seasonal woes includes the parties, booze, food and
usual foolishness around the office. Lots of work gets pushed into the
“New Year”. Many begin taking inventory on how they did
One of the principal notions many newly retired folks consider is
volunteering. To be sure, most community agencies will attest there is
a large and growing need. Interestingly enough, these same agencies are
mostly run by paid full or part-time staff, and the work available to
volunteers is mostly limited to administrative chores and fundraising. Volunteers of America, for example, is almost entirely run by career social workers and full-time staff.
I think the reason for so little actual volunteering
In 1981, I was a member of the California Commission on Aging.
Looking back, I find it ironic that, with a couple of exceptions,
everyone on the commission was in their 40s. We thought we knew a lot
about aging, which was, in retrospect, just plain naïve. The two people
in their 60s were seemingly token ‘oldsters’, lending their gray hair
to our committee.
One
of the things I thought I knew was that everyone, including the old, is
afraid to die. As I began to speak with hundreds
By Shae Hadden
Bio
I was surprised to sit down to dinner at a restaurant last night and
look up to see a table full of women boldly wearing red hats sitting
across from me. Few people wear hats these days, fewer still with any
sense of style. Yet these ladies, members of the Red Hat Society, were obviously comfortable with themselves and sassy enough to carry it off.
Curious
to know more about them than just their trademark red hats and purple
outfits, I went over and chatted with them
I am against trying to ‘legislate’ or ‘regulate’ good behavior. I
don’t think people respond very well to rules that are ‘good for
them’—whether it is anti-smoking legislation, ‘dietary’ packaging, or
sanctions on putting condom machines in high schools. People will, at
best, comply, but the underlying problems and cognitive blindness
persists for decades (if not forever). The result is institutionalized
secrecy, hypocrisy, black markets
It occurs to me that we relate to our chronological age as something
that we don’t control. And we spend an enormous amount of time and
energy resisting this lack of control. A friend of mine overheard a
40-something woman recently tell a colleague, “Oh, I figure that I will
be pretty well finished by the time I am 60, so I need to make hay
while the sun shines”. She
was talking about her love life, but it brought home the notion of how
we all
If I could give one gift to my children, I think it would be
“acceptance”. It isn’t too hard to understand intellectually that we
should simply accept life on life’s terms and not try to control what
we can’t really control. Yet, it’s a hard lesson to learn. I think not
accepting may be the source of most, if not all, suffering. When we
live with the view that reality ‘should be’ other than it is, we are
living in a dream (at best) and a state