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Nov 2008
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Patient Patients

Friday Nov 07 2008

   By Shae Hadden | Bio
How often do we relate to our health as we grow older as something ‘less than’ what it was in the past? I am reminded of a dear friend in her 20s who has lived with polio all her life. For her, the baseline of health is so very different than mine, and yet, as she grows older, she too is caught up in the ‘less than’ comparison. Over the past few months, I have been discovering another way of relating to my health—both present and future. I have been discovering that I am not my health or any story I may have about what was possible in the past or what’s possible in the future for my body. I am learning how to be a patient patient, a middle-aged woman committed to my healing process.[Read More]

Written by admin at Health

Tagged with: balance commitment health patience

Patience

Thursday Nov 06 2008

   By Shae Hadden | Bio
While waiting for the results of the U.S. presidential election to come in, I was musing on what patience is and how valuable it will be in the days ahead. Patience is the ability to endure without complaint, to persevere when things get rough, to tolerate without annoyance or provocation. Being patient is one way of relating to our circumstances and to time that allows us to avoid being victims. The way of patience is the way of surrender and trust—surrender to ‘what is’ and trust that our intentions will unfold in time. The American people have patiently endured this months-long campaign…and, for the most part, have not been upset or annoyed with the slow playing out of their democratic process.[Read More]

Written by admin at The Great Turning

Tagged with: obama patience surrender trust

Estimating Age

Friday Oct 31 2008

   By Shae Hadden | Bio

Elizabeth Gilbert's Eat Pray Love contains an interesting perspective on aging. For the Balinese, it is more important what day of the week you were born on than the year you were born in. One of the characters, a Balinese medicine man named Ketut, knows only that his birthday is on Thursday and that he was an adult in WWII. His estimates of his age vary daily, depending on how tired or upbeat he's feeling

Imagine what life might be like if you didn't know what year you were born in....

[Read More]

Written by admin at Fearless Aging

Tagged with: age

Life at the Growing Edge

Tuesday Oct 28 2008

   By Shae Hadden | Bio
Several years ago, a wise 93-year-old man named Hayden shared with me his principles for living life “at the growing edge”. He had printed them on cards, in the shape of a bookmark, and distributed them to everyone who engaged in meaningful conversation with him. Today, as I’m recovering from the first major surgery I’ve ever had, I was drawn to reflect on a couple of them again. I’m sure he wouldn’t mind if I shared them with you now:[Read More]

Written by admin at Fearless Aging

Tagged with: choice compassion growing health letting_go responsibility

Political Leanings

Wednesday Oct 15 2008

  By Shae Hadden | Bio

Today is the day after the Canadian federal elections. It's also Blog Action Day on Poverty. Admittedly, poverty is an important issue, and so are politics. But there is an intractable problem we all face that is the context for poverty, economics and politics. And that is the environment. Our elected leaders in Canada and the U.S. will not only set the course for North American environmental and economic policies for the next few years, but will also impact our long-term future as well. And we all (developed and developing countries alike) need to transition to clean energy economies if we want to avert global disaster.

[Read More]

Written by admin at Leadership

Tagged with: economics election environment politics

Exercising Our Right

Tuesday Oct 14 2008

   By Shae Hadden | Bio


With elections today in Canada and next month in the U.S., this is a good time to remind all the women we know to exercise their right to vote--a right which we've only had for less than a century. In July 1917, a group of 33 women picketed outside the White House, asking for the right to vote. They were rounded up by 40 police wielding clubs, brought to Occoquan Workhouse in Virginia and imprisoned for "obstructing sidewalk traffic".

[Read More]

Written by admin at Wisdom in Action

Tagged with: courage history right vote

Caught Napping

Monday Oct 13 2008

   By Shae Hadden | Bio

It's Thanksgiving in Canada, and I've just enjoyed a full weekend of personal and work commitments. But the highlight of the weekend was a chance to reconnect with the power of the 'nap'. Research in the past few years has found that the human body requires as much sleep as the brain will allow it and that the brain needs a rest every now and then.

[Read More]

Written by admin at Health

Tagged with: creativity nap sleep

Equanimity

Tuesday Oct 07 2008

   By Shae Hadden | Bio

When one is free, one is accepting everything that appears with equanimity.

When one is accepting everything that appears with equanimity, one is free.

© 2008 Shae Hadden. All rights reserved.

 

[Read More]

Written by admin at Fearless Aging

Tagged with: equanimity freedom

Purpose and Meaning

Monday Sep 22 2008

   By Shae Hadden | Bio

The official arrival of fall always surprises me. It’s never the change in weather so much as the passage of time that draws me up short—what happened to the last few months of my life? This year I feel as if I’ve been lost in a time warp while the rest of the world runs ahead at its crazy pace…and as if I’m only just beginning to rejoin the rest of the human race. And no, I didn’t go on an extended vacation or take a leave of absence. All I did was connect to my purpose…and then my body seemed to fall apart. Strange, but I’ve come to realize a distinction between purpose and meaning through being ‘sidelined’ with health issues.

[Read More]

Written by admin at Fearless Aging

Tagged with: health intention interpretation meaning purpose

Angst

Tuesday Sep 16 2008

   By Jim Selman | Bio
I like this word. I don’t know why…perhaps because it is one of those words that seems to express itself in speaking of it. The word means ‘anxiety’—a kind of generalized anxiety with being alive. The existential philosophers talked a lot about angst. In fact, we normally associate angst with existentialism—existential angst. The word is usually associated with a negative mood such as depression or what Thomas Merton characterized as “the dark night of the soul”. I think that Heidegger talked about it as the inherent tension between ‘being’ and ‘non-being’. I think that angst underlies the ‘suffering’ that Buddha associated with human existence and probably is behind the concept of ‘original sin’. Whatever its origins or deeper meanings, it is a day-to-day practical reality for most of us in our unending quest to ‘get it right’ and ‘be happy’.[Read More]

Written by admin at Personal Empowerment

Tagged with: angst existentialism

Conversations about Palin

Monday Sep 15 2008

   By Shae Hadden | Bio
Since Sarah Palin’s Gibson interviews, I’ve been hearing a lot of people saying that she reminds them of George Bush—even more so than John McCain does. Some of the similarities they’re seeing between Palin and Bush include:[Read More]

Written by admin at Leadership

Tagged with: bush mccain palin

Community

Tuesday Aug 05 2008

   By Shae Hadden | Bio

In the busyness of mid-life career pursuits, we can easily find ourselves letting relationships slide. In no time at all, it seems years have gone by, we’ve lost touch with dear friends from near and far, and forgotten the lure of long-promised adventures we were going to share. A recent NY Times article about Elizabeth Goodyear, a centenarian confined to her one-bedroom walk-up, has prompted me to reconsider my relationship to others and what ‘community’ I want to grow older in.

[Read More]

Written by admin at Fearless Aging

Tagged with: career community giving receiving relationship

Brain Games

Wednesday Jul 30 2008

   By Shae Hadden | Bio

An overwhelming concern with mental fitness seems obvious from the plethora of "brain games" geared to ‘older’ people. This fascination with keeping our minds and our memories intact is admirable considering that we will probably need our faculties for a lot longer than any previous generation. From sudoku to crosswords, challenging video games to virtual realities, we have many options to choose from. Each offers different challenges for our key brain functions: concentration, language, memory, logic/reasoning, and visual/spatial skills. Two assumptions underlie much of the research and development in the area of online brain games for older adults:

[Read More]

Written by admin at Health

Tagged with: brain dementia game leisure video_games

Multigenerational or intergenerational?

Wednesday Jul 23 2008

   By Shae Hadden | Bio

Traditionally, a generation was defined as the time between the birth of parents and the birth of their offspring (about 30 years). Recently, however, a more accurate definition would be a group of people born and shaped by a particular span of time. The eras of Generations X, Y and Z span much less than two decades each. And every generation experiences life from a different perspective including changing societal values, technologies and career options. These different perspectives are very apparent  when we communicate with each other.

[Read More]

Written by admin at Wisdom in Action

Tagged with: collaboration generations intergenerational language multigenerational

Virtual Giving

Friday Jul 18 2008

   By Shae Hadden | Bio

Usually we think of the inevitable convergence of technologies as being beneficial for the majority of people using them. Take the introduction of video to the internet, or the internet to the cell phone, for example. As soon as we discover something that works that people want, then the advertisers and marketers are on the bandwagon, looking for opportunities to sell within the new medium. What has me shaking my head today is the obvious marketing spin on ‘virtual gifts’, iconic symbols of items one might give to someone in appreciation or sympathy.

[Read More]

Written by admin at Fearless Aging

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