Tag Archives: aging

The Next 10 Years

EI 1006

Another year. This year’s resolutions looked pretty much the same as last year and the year before that so I’ve resolved to stop making New Year’s resolutions. Nonetheless the year-end (or beginning) is a time that calls for taking stock and reflecting on the past and the future. This year the big questions for me have to do with the next 10 years.

I have laughed a lot about how easily I can fall into making just about anything significant. I even made

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New Beginnings

EI 1016

By Jim Selman | Bio

One of the toughest things we ever learn is to ‘let go’.  I can’ t remember all the times I have made resolutions or tried to ‘reinvent’ myself or start over in one way or another. Every time we end a relationship or a job or some deeply ingrained habit (whether voluntary or involuntary) we must confront the break between the certain past and the possible future. And as far as I know there is no way to create and experience a ‘new’ future

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The Geezer’s Crusade

By Jim Selman | Bio

David Brooks wrote a very compelling New York Times op ed piece called “The Geezer’s Crusade”. His point was that the elders in our society hold the future for everyone in their hands (so to speak).  Since 1980 when I was serving on the California Commission on Aging, one of my biggest concerns has been that, as a society, we are turning older people into constituents competing

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7 Reasons Why Elders Make Great Lovers (and have better sex)

By Jim Selman | Bio

There is an old joke that says, “Sex after 60 is better than ever, but the mounting and dismounting aren’t so pretty.” If you’re laughing, you know what I’m talking about. If not, you’re still young enough to have something to look forward to. I attended a conference recently featuring Steve Pavlina, the number one blogger on personal development. The topic was about expanding traffic to your blog and one of his ideas was to write about something ‘timeless’, something that lots of people have in common and that breaks the mold of everyone’s expectations. Well, my writing has been about transforming our notions of growing older and to encourage intergenerational dialogue, so what better topic to muse on than SEX.

I know it’s kind of weird to think about our parents and grandparents ‘doing it’, but the fact is that they do. We just tend to avoid discussing that it happens among our Elders. While Elders are usually older than we are, that’s not always the case. In some cultures, the young are the Elders, since they are more connected to what is important to the community than the old. As I have been saying on this blog for the last few years, we need to get real and be open across

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Creating Home in the Nursing Home

The Pioneer Network, in collaboration with the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS), will be hosting Creating Home in the Nursing Home, a one-day symposium, on February 11th in Baltimore. This second national symposium on culture change will focus on  Food and Dining Requirements and will feature a keynote by Assistant Secretary for Aging Kathy Greenlee of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. Recommendations

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Aging through a Physician’s Lens

For the past 20 years, Dr. Jeffrey Levine has photographed elders in his medical practice and across the U.S. His photos have been published in many medical journals and textbooks. This Thursday, he will be giving a lecture at the opening of his photography exhibition, Aging Through a Physician’s Lens, in New York at the NY Academy of Medicine (1216 Fifth Avenue at 103rd Street). The exhibit will be open for viewing from 5 to 7 pm and his one-hour lecture begins at 7.

The exhibit, which

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Wolf’s Theorem: Show Up, Work Hard, Let Go

By Stuart J. Whitley | Bio

I’ve been writing about the ethic of aging, which is an internal imperative obligating the transmission of values, ethics and wisdom from one generation to another. Usually, this is a phenomenon that occurs unconsciously, in a way nearly invisible against the tapestry of quotidian life. But now and then, it’s rendered explicit, often in surprisingly casual ways.

An old friend Wolf and I were in a hunting camp one brilliant fall day this September, each of us with our new son-in-law. It was a spot of extraordinary beauty, near the confluence of the Stewart and Yukon Rivers. It was about as close to nowhere as one can get without a GPS fix. It had been a glorious full day, and sitting on the high riverbank at sunset, scotch in hand, it was hard not to think that when God decided to put His hand to world-building and started to

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Giving Up ‘Giving Up’

By Jim Selman | Bio

My partner and I were recently enjoying one of those lazy weekend mornings just chatting about life in general when we got onto the subject of getting older and how we feel about it all. I made the point that my passion and The Eldering Institute® is about transforming our culture’s view of aging and teaching people that we can change how we relate to the future—and, as a consequence, we can have more choices, more possibility and more ‘aliveness’

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N.O.P.E.: National Organization of Pissed Off Elders

By Jim Selman | Bio

I want to create a new organization to stamp out stupidity and indifference and restore common decency and goodwill into society. I think I’ll call it the National Organization of Pissed-Off Elders (N.O.P.E.).

What’s pissing us off?

A lot more than just ‘aging’ issues like Social Security, pharmaceuticals and our sex lives.

First, it pisses us off that the people in charge are squandering away the opportunities they had to make the world work, or at least be a better place. For example…

  • Thinking we get stupid as we get older
  • Growth at any cost
  • Short-sightedness
  • Self-righteousness
  • Special interests
  • Contrived controversy
  • Bullying, greed and intolerance
  • Turning an economic mechanism like capitalism into an ideology
  • “Us versus Them”ism

N.O.P.E. could have both positive and negative strategies. For example, when we’re talking to someone who is speaking baby talk to us or raising their voice so we can hear, we could shout

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