Tag Archives: future

Wisdom in Action

Wisdom and Fear

By Jim Selman | Bio

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 dependent or of losing one’s faculties. The list could go on.

I am not of the opinion that there is nothing to fear. There are lots of things to fear. A person would have to be naïve not to pay attention to what they are doing and what’s going on around them. I am reminded, for example, of getting mugged last year. Just this spring, my son was attacked by a vicious street gang while walking home; fortunately, he got through it without any lasting harm. The point is that lots of bad things can happen and most of us are not well prepared

read more
Fearless Aging

Lighten Up

By Jim Selman | Bio

The 1970s in the USA may not have been the ‘Age of Enlightenment’, but it was certainly the ‘Age of the Pursuit of Enlightenment’.  The Esalen Institute was in its hey day, the est training was blowing everyone’s mind, and authentic Indian yogis were in demand. We thought the Age of Aquarius was really here and that peace and love were just a few years away.

Maybe we were naïve, but it was a good time when young people were trying hard to be better people and

read more
Learning

Paradox and Confusion

By Shae Hadden | Bio

Someone was telling me recently that some of Buddhist temples in Japan are guarded by two fierce-looking demon-like figures. These guardians of ‘Truth’ are known as ‘Paradox’ and ‘Confusion’. These days, paradox and confusion seem to be states I alternate between in my quest to discover who I am and what future I want to create. If I’m not confused, then I’m trying to embrace something that defies intuition. My ‘truth’ seems elusive.

I’ve been contemplating different possible futures for myself, visualizing myself in different situations, doing different things, and being with different people. Casting aside all of my limiting beliefs and patterns, I’m coming up with a wild assortment of possibilities to choose from. And I’m totally confused. It’s almost as disheartening as trying on different bathing suits at the store (another instance where I get confused). Except that in my imaginings of the

read more
Fearless Aging

Unreasonable

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

read more
Fearless Aging

Slowing Down

My neighbor and good friend is moving to an apartment without stairs in another city where there’s a better environment for retirees and a more laid-back lifestyle. She tells me that she is ‘slowing down’. I am sure she is making the right decision for her—stairs have become difficult following hip surgery last year. And I am sure she knows that our choice of wording reveals
some of the bias hidden in our cultural predisposition to the
future.

To be sure, we hear a lot of people declaring

read more
Retirement

Memorial Day II

Today is Memorial Day in the USA. This is usually a long weekend filled with family and fun. I am at Lake Kiowa in Texas, a retirement community of about thousand homes. My Dad and sister live here. There is a lot of golf, fishing and endless clubs. This is a prototypical retirement community—most people are active. There are flags in front of most of the houses, there is apparently a cottage industry that will put up and take down your flag on special occasions like this weekend, election days

read more
Retirement

Working Longer

According to Professor Yarrow, a history professor at American University, it is unpatriotic to retire while you are still in good health.

"Retiring when you’re still in good health isn’t just wrong, it’s profoundly selfish and unpatriotic…Dropping out of the workforce while still in one’s prime means ending one’s contributions to America’s strength, mortgaging our children’s and grandchildren’s future, and leeching trillions of taxpayer

read more
Fearless Aging

Futurists

In the 1970s, I belonged to The World Future Society. I even toyed with the idea of becoming a ‘futurist’. I vaguely recall that there was a magazine on the subject and various intellectuals were trying to get prediction raised to the status of a science. According to Wired magazine, the Society still exists and there are people who call themselves professional futurists, but the numbers are shrinking and their status seems to be less than in the past—primarily because the future

read more
Leadership

The Cost of Comfort

By Shae Hadden | Bio

It’s so easy to get ‘comfortable’ with the circumstances of our lives—even when they are uncomfortable or when we can see that they may very likely lead to discomfort. It’s almost natural, sometimes even expected, that we complain about what’s ‘not right’ or ‘not perfect’ in our lives. But complaining (to ourselves or others) doesn’t change anything and we’re left ‘adapting’ ourselves to living with whatever is contributing to our discomfort.

Complaining

read more
Wisdom in Action

Babylon

I went to an interesting exhibition called “Babylon” at the Louvre* over the weekend. A lot of the explanations were in French, so I am sure I missed a lot of the factual history. What was clear was the mythology surrounding the Tower of Babel that God supposedly destroyed when the civilization became too decadent. As I recall, this account heralds the beginning of disparate languages and the considerable miscommunication that has been going on between human beings every since.

We’ve been

read more