By Stuart Whitley | Bio
the man with the unpressed suit and upraised arms
speaking in monotone, knows exits and oxygen masks
the woman in the seat beside me moulds latex
into monsters’ heads for movies, and wonders
if she has time for a Harvey’s hamburger, loaded,
before her bags arrive on the carousel
do these people have wisdom?
five miles below, a man scratches earth from dinosaur bones
and another scutters down darkened lanes breaking
By Stuart J Whitley | Bio
In my last post I wondered about whether or not there was an ethic of aging. Again, by ‘ethics’ I mean simply some general consensus or agreement about what is good about the way we relate to one another. This is a group or communal expression of belief, rather than an individual or moral outlook. The distinction is thus simply drawn between morals and ethics, terms which are often interposed. I should be more explicit and ask whether there is a reasonable consensus
By Jim Selman | Bio
Over the course of my lifetime, I have heard many ‘bottom-line’ bits of wisdom. For example, “the key to happiness is loving what you do”. Or, “at the end of the day, you can either resist life or surrender and live life on life’s terms”. These kinds of nuggets are usually true and are certainly valid in a list of maxims and aphorisms for living. “All I Really Need to Know I Learned in Kindergarten” by Robert Fulghum is a great example of
By Jim Selman | Bio
Socrates said that we don’t really have wisdom until we learn to die. Cornell West said the same thing in the acclaimed documentary Examined Life by Astra Taylor. When I first became interested in aging and how our culture views ‘growing older’ many years ago, I learned that, beyond a certain age, very few people seem to be afraid of death. Some may be afraid of dying with unfinished business, but we eventually reach a point when the fact of our death is no longer
By Jim Selman | Bio
The following thoughts were shared by a friend of mine on the question of what it is like to ‘be’ older and wiser. I think they express something we can all learn from if we haven’t already."What’s it like to ‘be’ my age? Besides the obvious physical changes, there is a kind of release—a gentle meltdown—a relaxation that goes beyond where any mere massage could take me.
And much wisdom…
Most of all, I’m amazed with myself…that life can be so enlivening—deliriously luscious—and that I am a being of such limitless possibility. And I’m infinitely grateful that I may be able to ‘really’ serve others now…without
By Jim Selman | Bio
The conventional wisdom in Alcoholics Anonymous is that alcoholism is a ‘disease’ of the ego—self-centeredness. Basically the alcoholic becomes trapped in his or her own point of view and denies any other perspective on ‘reality’. The alcohol is a symptom of a loss of control and choice—a condition of cognitive blindness and a self-destructive pattern of behavior. I have distinguished that culture works the same way. That is, the ego is to the individual what culture
By Jim Selman | Bio
"The worldviews of our two generations are both equally valid. They are simply our assessments of ‘the way it is’ and what is and is not possible. Neither of our assessments are ‘the truth’. And neither are ‘false’.Understanding this doesn’t make understanding each other’s perspective any easier. I have experience and perspective that you don’t have, just as you have experience and perspective that I don’t have. I may never understand the appeal in having tattoos or spending large amounts of time in virtual space. You may never understand the kind of ‘faith’ many of my peers have in public institutions. If we are going to work together, we need to be able to accept and appreciate
By Jim Selman | Bio
The Wall Street Journal last week had an article on the new theme of the annual commencement speech celebrity sweepstakes: “We are really, really sorry”. On campus after campus, speakers of the Boomer generation were apologizing to the twenty-something generation (I don’t remember the nomenclature for this batch of graduates) for the self-centered and often greedy abuses of
By Jim Selman | Bio
In 1976, I was working with some government employees in Virginia trying to implement a new system for integrating human services—a kind of one-stop shop for all the various services offered at that time. I had just finished the est training the previous July and was overwhelmed with my own experience and the idea that a person could transform themselves and their relationship to everything. Until then, I had bought into the belief that people don’t really change in fundamental ways, that personalities are fairly fixed, and that it requires a major crisis to shift our perceptions of reality. It was during that period that I formulated the idea that there were things that could be managed or taught and other things that could not be managed or taught but that could be “coached”. The difference had to do with how we observe others and ourselves and how we relate to power and responsibility.This was a time before the concept of organizational culture had appeared in the business lexicon. I don’t think I even heard the word ‘paradigm’ until about 1980 or so. Peter Drucker was about the only popular writer on the subject of management. This was a time when people thought in terms of careers spanning a lifetime and many even expected to work for one or perhaps two companies for life. Tom Peter’s landmark book,
By Jim Selman | Bio
Do you remember when networks of computers first arrived on the scene? Moving information onto the new technological platform decentralized and dispersed information and knowledge, a move that resulted in a significant communications revolution that still has repercussions today. Giving people the ability to access and share what had previously existed only on paper or in the minds of certain individuals not only sped up the rate of transactions, but also freed individuals from a certain amount of manipulation.Some resisted the move to computers, feeling threatened by what they perceived as a loss of control—they equated giving up the ‘management’ of ‘their’ information and knowledge as a threat to their power. Ironically, organizations eventually embraced computers as a means to ‘manage’ knowledge, creating complex online systems to store and share the experience and expertise of their employees.
We’re now witnessing an