I was speaking about the future with my son recently over an obscenely large steak at an Argentinian restaurant in Mexico City. We’d just seen a real ‘shoot ’em up’ film which just happened to be called Shoot ’em Up. The hero, a kind of homeless James Bond, lives on the street, reminiscent of Lee Child’s character Jack Reach. They are both tougher than tough guys, the kind of character who make the bad guys feel bad that they ever met. Last night’s film was about 500 guys
Tag Archives: conversation
Time and Temporality
Lately I have been thinking about the future and the distinction between time and temporality. Our relationship to time can vary depending upon our culture and the era in which we are living. If I imagine living 300 or 400 years ago in what was primarily an agricultural ‘reality’, time was cyclical—we measured it in terms of seasons and lived in the certainty that life didn’t change much from one generation to the next. I can contrast that to today when time
Angst
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
Aging as a Conversation II
By Elizabeth Russell
Bio
View the first post in this two-part series.
The conversation about age begins when we are born and continues throughout life. It may be written or spoken. It may come from our mothers (who heard it from their mothers) or it may come from people who have studied other people in order to make profound pronouncements. Whatever the source, it is all conversation. And labels are one element of the conversation—labels we give to everything, labels that carry weight and are endowed, over the years, with meaning such as young, old, immature, stodgy, etc.Those who engage in the conversation don’t make it
up. It is a given, running through all the channels—parents, peers,
school, television, advertising, public and private institutions. From
this conversation we learn there are things we can do at five that we
can’t do when we are seven, responsibilities we have at 15 that we
don’t have at 10, privileges we acquire at 21 we don’t have when we are
17.
Social
Family
My father and I drove from Arizona to the Northwest last week and we are now enjoying a relaxed week together along with my daughter and her husband. I am grateful for the opportunity to spend whatever time I can with family. I think that, as we get older, our appreciation for our children and parents expands. At the same time, I can also see that I can become ‘stuck’ in a kind of ‘family-get-together-pattern’. Not that this is bad, but it is different than how I might normally spend a
The Culture of Aging
People sometimes ask me what I mean by ‘the culture of aging’. I can start by explaining what I mean by ‘culture’.
Culture is, first of all, a word. And, like all words, it is a label for some phenomenon, some observable thing or idea. Culture is a concept and a very basic aspect of who we are. It contributes to how we relate to the world and, most of the time, constitutes an opening for our actions. It is a context for our human experience and occurs as a kind of non-stop conversation
Learning Across Generations
We had a wonderful conversation last night with my daughter Lauren (who is graduating from college this week) and two of her friends. The mood was celebratory with lots of speculation about Lauren’s future and so forth. The conversation became focused and very interesting as we began to talk about how her generation uses and participates in the ‘technological space’ of the Internet. Specifically, we ‘older folks’ were wondering why the young seem so intent on putting everything about
Respecting Children
I had an extraordinary visit with my oldest daughter last week. She is an elementary school teacher in Houston, and an excellent one by all accounts. She and her husband have a lovely home and friends. Their lives are good. What made the visit special for me was that Cindy and I had one of those heart-to-heart talks that parents and children can have from time to time, and I realized how much there is for me to learn from her.
Perhaps this is just me, but I can see how easy it is to get so caught
Aging as a Conversation
By Elizabeth Russell
Bio
We think of aging as something that happens to us, something as
inevitable as waking up in the morning. But what if our way of speaking
about aging actually influences our experience of it?
Satchel
Paige once asked, “How old would you be if you didn’t know how old you
was?” Because he was black, he wasn’t allowed to play major league
baseball until he was well past retirement age for ball players. When
he finally got
Navigating the Turning
By Shae Hadden
Bio
I was somewhat surprised to see
that most conference participants appeared to be in their late 40s and
up. The few younger people who were present stood out from the crowd.
Korten noted in his closing remarks how most audiences he speaks to are
comprised of older people in their 50s and 60s, and that there is a
need to attract younger people. Perhaps their absence is indicative of
the fact that North American society does not, for the most part,