For a long time, I have had the point of view that one of the biggest problems of aging in our contemporary culture is that it leads most people towards a ‘state of resignation’. Resignation is the mood we can get caught in when we ‘give up’, when we stop living into the future as possibility. It is the mood of succumbing to the belief that circumstances are bigger than we are. It is a mood of defeat that generates comments like: “Why bother since we can’t do anything about it anyway?”
Tag Archives: resignation
My Father in His House of Logs
I was in a conversation the other day with some friends. It wasn’t long before we were bemoaning the ‘state of the world’. We moved from politics in Washington DC to global warming and the Middle East, then took on the environment, the media and the latest brouhaha about China shooting down a satellite. In a few minutes, we were feeling a bit of despair at the seemingly endless list of intractable problems, most of which are threatening our quality of life—if not the future of our
Resignation
A friend was asking me why I’m so keen to change our
conversation about aging—to transform the culture of aging from one of
decline to one of possibility. One answer is self-interest, insofar as
I am growing older and experiencing more and more of the symptoms of a
culture that objectifies me and wants me to follow its prescription for
“growing old gracefully” (which means ‘slow down’, step aside, play
golf, enjoy my grandchildren, be
Resignation at Work
I have been working a lot lately with organizations and, in
particular, with their cultures and attempts to change them. Given my
growing interest in the culture of aging, I have been paying a lot of
attention to what people say about how the ‘retirement’ process works,
particularly in the Public Service and other large bureaucracies. The
gist of what I hear is that people do their darnedest to ‘get away’
from all the bullshit, while still ‘hanging
Old Folks’ Day
Happy IDOP everyone! Oh, you didn’t know that the United Nations
implemented October 1st as the International Day of Older Persons 16
years ago? Well, it’s true. Lots of information available online about
the UN Program on Ageing. The opening remark by the Secretary General pretty well sums up what it is all about.
"I am only one of 600 million persons in the world over the age of
60. As people across the globe come to live increasingly