Tom Brokaw in a recent AARP op-ed piece pointed to the obvious fact that as the Boomers retire they’re going to change our social and economic reality in profound ways. Lots of others are predicting the coming crunch associated with questions of how to pay astronomical healthcare and Social Security costs with a shrinking workforce and tax base. Consider that about 4 or 5 of us have supported
Tag Archives: future
Moods
Moods are central to our lives. There isn’t a time when we are not in one mood or another. For most of us, our moods are organizing how we feel, what we do and how we explain just about everything to ourselves most of the time. For example, can you remember the last time you said, “I am happy” or “I am unhappy” without following the statement with “because”? No, we always have a story for why we are in whatever mood we’re in—whether it is a good one or a bad one.
I often ask
Do You Really Want to Know?
The latest breakthroughs in genome technology will now be available to consumers, allowing them to trace their past in order to predict their future. Anne Wojcicki, the wife of Google co-founder Sergey Brin, is launching 23andme today. The
web-based service, partially funded by Google, has set out to revolutionize how
we look at ourselves in reference to the past, present and future. For $999, consumers will get a complete DNA scan that reveals
Life Expectancy
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
My Body
I have been thinking a lot about my body. In my work, the body is a key to learning anything. Unless we ‘embody’ new distinctions, we continue to operate inside our habitual worldview and way of being—‘inside the box’. What I can see is that my conversation about my body, like all my conversations needs to change as I grow older. If I attempt to apply the same concepts and tools I learned and used as a young man to deal with who I am today, including my body, then I am going to be trapped
Springtime in Buenos Aires
I am always a little disoriented between the seasons when I travel to Argentina or Brazil. When it is autumn in Canada, it is spring in Buenos Aires. It is a beautiful and refreshing time of year. I am thinking about the clichéd parallel between the seasons and the phases of our lives—this being the autumn of my life. Yet as I travel, I can see how fluid and changeable the seasons can be depending upon where you are standing. This is an apt metaphor for living every moment creatively—consciously
Father and Son
I was speaking about the future with my son recently over an obscenely large steak at an Argentinian restaurant in Mexico City. We’d just seen a real ‘shoot ’em up’ film which just happened to be called Shoot ’em Up. The hero, a kind of homeless James Bond, lives on the street, reminiscent of Lee Child’s character Jack Reach. They are both tougher than tough guys, the kind of character who make the bad guys feel bad that they ever met. Last night’s film was about 500 guys
Time and Temporality
Lately I have been thinking about the future and the distinction between time and temporality. Our relationship to time can vary depending upon our culture and the era in which we are living. If I imagine living 300 or 400 years ago in what was primarily an agricultural ‘reality’, time was cyclical—we measured it in terms of seasons and lived in the certainty that life didn’t change much from one generation to the next. I can contrast that to today when time
Funk
I was having a cup of coffee with a very good friend of mine the other morning. He was feeling down—actually, he said he was feeling a little ‘crazy’. On one level, his life has never been better, his work is satisfying and, best of all, according to him, he has a new Porsche that is requiring he move to the next level of performance in driving. Life is good.
Yet, amidst all his success (which includes a loving, happy marriage and new grandkids), he was in a deep ‘funk’. I say funk because
Time and Temporality
Lately I have been thinking about the future and the distinction between time and temporality. Our relationship to time can vary depending upon our culture and the era in which we are living. If I imagine living 300 or 400 years ago in what was primarily an agricultural ‘reality’, time was cyclical—we measured it in terms of seasons and lived in the certainty that life didn’t change much from one generation to the next. I can contrast that to today when time is viewed more like a highway