“Mentors and apprentices are partners in an ancient human dance . . . the dance of the spiraling generations, in which the old empower the young with their experience and the young empower the old with new life, reweaving the fabric of the human community as they touch and turn.”
—Parker J. Palmer
American author, educator, activist
Tag Archives: old
Still Going Strong
The Herald Sun recently featured an article on Betty Calman, an 83-year-old instructor still going strong after 40 years of teaching yoga. Author of 3 books on yoga and a pioneer in bringing this practice to Australia in the 1950s, Ms. Calman was drawn back into teaching up to 11 classes per week 8 years ago by her daughter, who runs a health centre and needed more instructors. According to Betty, "You’re never too old. The body is a remarkable instrument. It can
stretch
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
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
Riverboats and Bone Yards V
By Stu Whitley
Bio
This is the fifth post in a five-part series.
Is there any joy to be found in sadness? I believe there is.Sadness is almost always about loss. If we are able to examine in a
serious way the nature of that loss, I think we would find a validation
of what we took to be good. In other words, sadness can be a
reaffirmation of the virtues we hold dear. This can be a bit tricky
though. For example, if one regrets the passage of youth for its own
sake, enormous and ultimately futile effort is needed to ignore the
The Mirror of Old
By Shae Hadden
Bio
I’m fascinated by how people affix meaning to language, and the
limitless interpretations they draw from words. ‘Old’, for example,
triggers different responses among my friends. And their
interpretations show me how they feel about growing older. It’s not
always a happy image…
For
the past few months, I’ve been meeting new people and they, for some
inexplicable reason, believe me to be younger than I actually am.
Flattering,