By Jim Selman | Bio
It was said that the philosopher Martin Heidegger’s last words were “Only God can save us.” He was, perhaps, one of the deeper thinkers (at least in modern times) on the question of who we are and what is really going on. As far as I know, he wasn’t religious. So what he meant by these words, if indeed he said them, is open to question.
My view is that he was talking about the fact that all human beings live in interpretations of “reality”—cultural and linguistic
By Kevin Brown | Bio
This week I have been having discussions with several of my friends and business associates concerning the apparent absence of choice as we are nearing retirement. It seems that for some people, there appears to be no choice but to remain with their current employer in a job they no longer find satisfaction in due to an anticipated financial loss associated with pension and health benefits. For many, this realization has them feeling like they have no choice in the matter. I have also noticed a similar view held by folks in the second half of their career, who are in their mid to late forties. They already have a sense of this apparent lack of choice, working in jobs they do not find satisfying and holding the view that they have few, if any, real options. They have mortgages to pay, a family to provide for, and the risk of changing jobs in this economic downturn just reinforces their apparent absence of choice. Do our actions, as a result of this deeply held belief, impact how we will experience aging as we enter our fifties, sixties, and beyond? Might this perceived absence of choice, if not confronted, place limits on our experience of aging? What can we do now, regardless of our age, to lay the groundwork for a future full of choice? Could we create for ourselves an experience of aging in which there are endless possibilities, with freedom and fulfillment a natural by-product? At the Eldering Institute, we hold the vision of living life as a possibility. Choice and possibility appear to me to go hand in hand. When we consciously choose how we relate to our circumstances, we allow for what is possible to come into our view. Even when life throws us a curve ball, we can choose to play the game and hit the ball as pitched or wait until the game of life occurs the way we would like it to occur. One response places us actively in the game of life: the other has us on the sidelines waiting for just the right conditions to arrive. We cannot change the circumstances of our lives. But could it be that we have choice about how we relate to everything in our lives? Take the employee who believes he cannot change jobs so late in his or her career and is experiencing a loss of power, freedom and possibility. They may feel trapped if the financial loss of leaving without another job to go to is a compelling reason to remain with the current employer. What if they simply accepted that they need an income and are, at the moment, choosing to remain with their current employer. Choosing gives them space to create a new possibility for themselves—perhaps a new game for themselves at work in which power, freedom, and fulfillment are present or perhaps new relationships to their career and money. What might be possible in your future if you were to play with the idea that you are always at choice in all areas of your life each and every day? © 2009 Kevin Brown. All rights reserved.By Jim Selman | Bio
I think that one of the things going on these days is that ‘Baby Boomers’ are waking up to the fact that they have a choice about how they age and what it means to be old. The Boomer label is just a demographic slogan. Personally, I don’t like being lumped into a single category with 70 million other folks. This sociological category of “Baby Boomer” (which is now almost synonymous with growing older) makes it easy for us to slip into generalizations about age and
By Jim Selman | Bio
Forty-five years ago Marshall McLuhan coined the phrase “the medium is the message”. I wonder what he would have made of today’s media-on-steroids. Someone sent me a fascinating YouTube piece called “Social Media in Plain English” , which was followed up with a dramatic piece on the extraordinary impact of all that is going on in the Social Media Revolution. It includes a new term I had never seen before: socialnomics. It’s getting easier and easier to feel ignorant and out of touch.The general consensus is that the phenomenon of social networking/social media is as potentially revolutionary as the Industrial Revolution. Whether this is hyperbole or turns out to be fact will remain a question for history. What is a fact is that the medium is changing faster and in more dramatic ways than many of us can keep up with. I was just getting comfortable with email, blogging and my own websites. And now, almost overnight it seems, I am confronted with Twitter,
By Kevin Brown | Bio
Have you noticed lately the impact that Boomers continue to have on the world as we know it? Yes, the ‘Net Generation’ is beginning to have a growing influence on our world and the way we interact with everyone in it. But the Boomers are not retiring or withdrawing from being in action on the field like their parents’ generation did before them. No, the Boomers are choosing to remain in the game and to impact how life occurs for them and for everyone else.
By Shae Hadden | Bio
Friends and family have been stressing the importance of taking vacations with me for years. I have somewhat deliberately avoided the conversation as much as possible until now. End result: a lifetime of little travel, lots of work and limited ‘fun’. All work and no play makes for a dull life. I’ve been beginning to wonder if perhaps I am afraid of taking vacations…for every time I think about it, my concerns about all the things that are remaining ‘undone’
By Sharon Knoll | Bio
Cooking with my daughter, Krista, is bliss. We were making Crabby Crabcakes, an incredible recipe from Mark Bittman at the NY Times. They were 99% crab with a little bit of stuff we purchased at the Queen Anne Farmers Market to hold them together: brand new potatoes baked with olive oil and rosemary, and sautéed summer squash and caramelized onions with herbs. (Can you stand it? Are you ready to rush out and cook and enjoy the wonderful tastes of fresh grown
By Jim Selman | Bio
Regina Brett of Cleveland, OH shared her top life lessons when she turned 90:
By Jim Selman | Bio
Future historians may mark the first decade of the 21st century as the time when democracy died. And if they do, they will say that democracy died because people became so resigned and afraid that they retreated into closed and cloistered communities motivated by self-interest, ideological fervor and ignorance. History will note that what began as honest differences grew into an irreconcilable fragmentation of the body politic.
Some will make the case that it all began with
By Kevin Brown | Bio
Increasingly I find myself thinking about the word
retirement and whether it has the appeal that it once had for the mature
worker. I remember, as if it were yesterday, my father talking about how he was
looking forward to retirement. After working long hours and raising a family,
there just did not seem much time for anything else. Through much of his
mid-life, my dad’s job (conductor for the