Today is a holiday in Madrid. There must be a million people on the streets. There is a lots of military pomp, soldiers marching by the review stand near my hotel, and five planes flying overhead. The weather is beautiful and life is good. I am always delighted to have a day off when I am in a city to just experience ‘being here’. Madrid’s downtown core is beautiful—great old buildings, wide avenues, a magnificent palace with a living monarch, and a great ‘old town’
Tag Archives: aging
Toward an Ethic of Aging II
By Stuart J. Whitley | Bio
Ethics concerns the attempt by disciplined discernment to identify moral options available in a given case, around which there is some general agreement. Professional societies and other groups, through statements of ethical standards or codes of conduct, attempt to assert rules about rightness of conduct that rise above the minimum standards of the law. This is most often referred to as ‘applied ethics’.
Morals involve the identification of what is good about a person’s
Acceptance
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 than in the best
Serene Ambition
I was talking with a fellow recently who was asking why this blog is called Serene Ambition™. He thought that the two words didn’t seem to go together. He could get ‘serenity’ and also understand ‘ambition’, but together they made no sense to him. In our normal way of relating to the world, you can have serenity (meaning inner peace, calmness, maybe even joy) or you can be ambitious (meaning committed to creating or accomplishing something in the future)—but not
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
The Plastic Brain
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
Caring for Your Parents
Do you have a unique perspective or a provocative question about caring for elderly family members?
WGBH Lab, part of the Boston-based PBS station, is looking for ‘real people’ stories. They are inviting anyone who cares for or has cared for aging relatives (or knows someone who has) to submit a 3-minute video story by February 22nd about how the experience has changed their lives and relationships. A selection of 10 to 20 of the submitted pieces will be posted on the WGBG Lab website
Curiosity
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
Shanghaied Again
OR "You Can Never Get Enough of What You Don’t Want"
By Charles E. Smith |Bio
A man is sitting in a bar having a beer,
eating cashews and at peace with the world. A pretty woman sits next to
him. He buys her a drink and after a bit she promises him that he can
have whatever he wants, which is usually what he is not getting at the
moment in relationship or what he is getting that he wishes he didn’t
have. He gets interested and then someone
At the End of the Day
The Christmas season is behind us and everyone is heading back to work. For many (including the self-employed), this has been a two or three-week holiday from before Christmas until the Monday following New Year’s Day. It isn’t always easy to get refocused and get back into gear. Nonetheless, inspired with new (or old) resolutions, I join the millions who are now focusing on what lies ahead.
I predict that 2008 will be the Year of the Optimist. I don’t know why. Not much has changed in the