Chapter 3
The Flame of Passion
Renewing Our Calling
New Elder
Mike McGuire
When we get our first job in our late teens or early 20s,we know very little about ourselves. We may be aware of our dreams and ambitions;we may have a sense of what we like best to do and what we do best—our gifts and talents— and we may know something about how to express those gifts insofar as our schooling has revealed them. But in terms of vocation—of what we are really called to do in the world—most of us are basically clueless. We have very little idea of what we’re really here for,of what sort of work truly fulfills us,of what we’re doing with our lives beyond earning a living,as opposed to making a life.
Unless we’re one of the lucky ones,like architect Mike McGuire.
Right after his 50th birthday,Richard and his wife, Sally,spent about a year restoring a house on a river they loved, the St.Croix. At times, the restoration was far from restorative—at least to their mental and emotional health. All the detail—windows,floors,the knobs on the cabinets in the kitchen—had to be considered and reconsidered. At times,Richard and Sally felt more like contractors than coaches. And yet—and in no small part thanks to their architect,Mike McGuire, it turned out to be worth it. Thanks to Mike’s help,the end result is a place where Sally and Richard feel they belong and where they feel a sense of belonging.
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By the time most of us reach the second half of life, we are quite experienced with the world of work. We know what it means to have a job and to fulfill our responsibilities quite capably and even creatively. But by the time we reach the second half,just as many of us feel a stronger-than-ever-before need to express ourselves more fully through our work. It’s no longer enough to simply have a job,even a good one, or even a career;we want something that enables us to express what we feel most strongly needs doing in the world and to have that expression touch people’s lives. A vital part of vital aging is passion— doing what we care about.
Mike McGuire thrives on the passion he has found his entire professional life as an architect.“I can’t remember a time when I wasn’t creatively challenged,”he says.“Oddly, I never set out to be an architect; I was interested in painting. But architecture was a way to survive in society without having to have a routine life. Even today I get excited about designing a simple two-car garage.”
Mike is someone who is responding to a powerful calling within him; he is living his vocation. The word vocation comes from the Latin root vox meaning“voice,”or vocare—”to call.”In the second half of life,many people are still seeking work that does more than pays the bills: work that allows them to speak from this voice deep within. Many such people—those who despair at finding their calling—feel abandoned.“Abandonment”literally means “to be uncalled,”to be without a clear destiny. This feeling happens even to the most thoughtful,self-aware people.
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At age 74,Mike plays tennis with people in their 50s and 60s.“They can’t understand why I’m not retired. I can’t fathom retiring. My definition of hell is living in some retirement community in Phoenix with people who all look like me! I’m still trying to create buildings that change lives. That’s still my passion.”
Mike brings a painter’s passion to his life and work. In fact, painting has been one of his passions his entire life. “Most of my friends are younger than me,”he says,“and I serve as some kind of mentor for many younger artist-types. I always ask them,‘Where would you go,anywhere in the world, to see art that moves you?’And I’m always startled when they come up empty; they can’t think of any place! It’s amazing to me. When I was a young architect, I drove clear across the country to visit a well-known architect I didn’t know but whom I admired.I parked in front of his mailbox and waited for him to show up. He didn’t have a clue who I was or what I was doing in front of his house. But within five minutes of sharing my passion with him,he realized I was a brother! That’s the passion I look for in young painters today.”
Community—a real sense of belonging—comes through shared passions.“I used to think of my place as my town,”Mike explains.“Now I’m more concerned with my country.I’m more interested now,than ever,what makes a place ‘the place.’Painting is like putting a message in a bottle—I’m trying to express my sense of place in the world.”
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What Do We Do With the Rest of Our Lives?
Living on purpose in the second half of our lives presents a unique opportunity and a great challenge. It’s an opportunity because, for many of us, the second half of life represents the first real chance we’ve had to define ourselves and to live in a manner of our own choosing. The challenge that comes along with this is that it’s up to us to decide what we really want to do with the rest of our life.
And that means it’s up to us to figure out what we really care about.
Most of us, for most of our lives, have our days pretty well mapped out in advance. From the time we were little kids, except perhaps for summer vacations, nearly every day has an agenda of some sort. We get up, go to school, take part in our extracurricular activities, come home, eat dinner, study, and go to bed. As adults, it’s pretty much the same, just with work replacing school. But suddenly, if we retire, everything changes. Our days stretch out before us, a vast and uncharted territory. Nobody’s telling us when to get up, when to go to bed, or what to do in the meantime.
At first, this can be very liberating. Sleeping late, outdoor recreation, gardening, travel—all the things we’ve been putting off for years, these are the activities we look forward to filling our days with. Soon, however, many people come to the realization that 24 hours is a long time. “I can only play so much golf,” is how one older gentleman we know put it.
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Human beings are essentially herd animals. We need to be part of something; we need to be needed. Unless we feel useful— somehow, some way—we find it extremely difficult to carry on. Statistics bear this out. An inordinate percentage of older adults die within 24 to 36 months of retirement. People come to feel they have nothing to live for and pretty soon, they don’t. It’s a self-fulfilling prophecy that prophesies doom.
In the hit movie, About Schmidt, Jack Nicholson plays Warren Schmidt, a 66-year-old man who, after retiring from a lifetime in the insurance business and subsequently losing his wife of 42 years, comes to see his life as totally meaningless. Near the end of the movie, he reflects, “I am weak. And I am a failure. There’s just no getting around it. Relatively soon, I will die . . . maybe in 20 years, maybe tomorrow. It doesn’t matter. Once I am dead, and everyone who knew me dies, it will be as though I never even existed. What difference has my life made to anyone? None that I can think of. None at all.”
Tragic sentiments indeed. And yet feelings that are not at all uncommon to many people in the second half, especially as we transition into the post-work phase of our lives. Without the daily structure of the workaday world, we lose our bearings and feel lost. Suddenly finding ourselves with all-too-much time for reflection, we look back on our lives and wonder what was the point. Not surprisingly, many of us, like Schmidt, conclude that there wasn’t any point, that our entire existence has made no difference to anyone at all.
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It doesn’t have to be this way, though. There’s no reason we can’t live on purpose during the second half of our lives. This gives rise, however to one of the most basic of all questions: Why do I get up in the morning?
New Elder
Sri K. Pattabhi Jois
Not very many 88-year-old men are up at six in the morning to lead a class of some 300 people in a vigorous 90-minute series of yoga poses. Even fewer do so after traveling halfway around the world from their home in India to major cities in the Western hemisphere,including London,New York,Los Angeles,and San Francisco. And even fewer do this in addition to maintaining a year-round schedule of daily teaching at a world-class center that welcomes students from all four corners of the globe. All of which makes Sri K.Pattabhi Jois, the founder of Mysore, India’s Ashtanga Research Center,and longtime teacher of Ashtanga Yoga,even more unique and amazing. His work has touched the lives of thousands for well over half a century and continues to do so in profound ways even as the beloved “Guruji”comes closer to his ninth decade on the planet.
How is it that some people, like Pattabhi Jois,maintain a vibrant and vital life well into their latest years whereas other people pretty much give up and die soon after retirement? Health,of course,has something to do with it; Pattabhi Jois, as a result of his many years of intense physical training, is extremely fit for a man of his age. But that’s not all:Many healthy people are pretty miserable in their later years,and many people suffering all sorts of physical afflictions retain a positive attitude all their days.
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The real key to aliveness in our later years is to touch the lives of others, especially those younger than us. But while the older we get,the more of those younger people there are, it’s not always easy to find avenues for connecting. It takes courage,flexibility,and probably a bit of luck. But those who do make the connections usually experience a heightened sense of energy and passion. And that’s not so bad for an old guy.
Bridging the Divide
Obviously, one thing that everyone who is entering the second half of life has in common is that we were all, at some point in our lives, in our first half. Ironically, all the time we spent in those years is no guarantee that we’ll have any great insight into the experience of them—especially when it comes to imaginatively conceiving of the experience of others. Getting older, in other words, is not necessarily very good preparation for understanding and connecting with the young. Dave knows this well. He was teaching a philosophy class at an alternative high school called Nova. He says:
It was a fairly mortifying experience in many ways, just like my own high school years. But I learned something very important in the process.
This high school didn’t require the students to attend classes; they could go or not go to class as long as they completed the required assignments according to a contract they had developed for the class. So, I never knew whether I would have any students when I showed up to teach.
The school had a central meeting area, a kind of lounge where students would congregate and decide whether to head off to class. I would arrive and be obliged to entice the students in my class to leave their friends and come to our classroom. This was the part that felt like my own high school experience: I had to be interesting and funny enough to get the cool kids to talk to me. If I was—and this was often a challenge when we were scheduled to discuss some rather esoteric aspect of the philosophical canon—then I’d be able to pull together a class. If not, then I’d hang around feeling embarrassed until the class period was over, at which point I could go home and lick my wound by writing a required assignment for the college classes I was teaching at the university.
The first three or four times I went to Nova, it was pretty much a disaster. I tried holding forth about the philosophical topic we were scheduled to discuss. A few kids might show some interest, but as soon as I began presenting the “official” view on the subject from philosophical experts like Descartes or Kant or Plato, their interest and attention immediately waned, and I was left sitting on the couch in the lounge, just me and my Classics of Western Philosophy text.
One day, though, after I’d been going to Nova about a month (my class met just once a week), I arrived to find the students in an extremely animated conversation about a protest against the World Trade Organization’s upcoming meeting in Seattle. I was fascinated both by the students’ ardor for the subject and their fairly high level of familiarity with the issues. So, instead of trying to lead the students away into a discussion of what I was interested in, I joined into their conversation. Instead of positioning myself as an “outside expert,” I came as an equal participant.
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In the course of our ensuing conversation, though, I had a number of opportunities to contribute philosophical perspectives that the students weren’t at all familiar with. I actually was able to cover a good deal of the material I had intended to explore that day. But it emerged out of the passions and questions of the students, as opposed to the preset agenda of what I thought they should be studying.
From that day on, I never came to Nova with a set agenda. I had lesson plans, sure, but I modified them on the spot depending on what the kids wanted to talk about. They came to be pretty interested in the material we were exploring and we managed to cover just about everything on my syllabus, but we did so in a manner that was driven by their interests, not mine.
What I learned from this was that if I wanted to engage these young people, I had to start from where they were. Eventually, they might come to be curious about the material I hoped to explore, but that wouldn’t happen by my announcing it. If the philosophy wasn’t relevant to them, they would reject it. But if they found that it had some value to their own lives, they ate it up. They sought out my knowledge and were eager to have me help them understand the material more fully. But it had to be on their terms, otherwise the project was doomed to—if not failure— at least my unending embarrassment.
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Dave’s experience can be a reminder to all of us who, as new elders, seek to engage young people in any sort of enterprise. Too often, we forget that the so-called wisdom we have to offer won’t be appreciated as such unless it makes a difference in people’s lives. All our experience in the world means little to others if it doesn’t relate to what they care about. From the perspective of youth, there are lots of crazy old people who talk to themselves about the past; there are far fewer new elders who engage them in issues relevant to the present.
The challenge, then, is to stay connected to the historical sources of our own wisdom while simultaneously remaining in touch with the current and future concerns facing young people in the world. This can be difficult to do, but the good news is, if we remain attuned to the indicators, we will receive much of the guidance we need to succeed. They’re out there, we just have to learn, as do the Hadza with the Honey Guide, how to look.
Lengthening Our Arms
One thing young people generally have little difficulty doing is expressing their needs. This doesn’t mean, however, that others— especially those with more history and experience—will understand what is being expressed. The question then becomes: How do we learn to listen? How do we learn to hear what others are saying . . . when they may not even be entirely clear on what they’re saying themselves?
Most of us, when we pass through our 40s or so, have some experience with becoming farsighted. There comes a day when the newsprint seems to have gotten smaller; we wonder why they’ve started printing the baseball box scores so tiny. We try to hold the paper far away enough from our eyes that we can read it; we discover, though, that—in what seems the mostly “likely” explanation—our arms have become too short. If only we could lengthen them, we’d be able to read perfectly; if only we could hold things steady a bit farther away, we’d be able to see fine.
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Simple as it is, this may be an appropriate metaphor for how to engage the interests and concerns of those younger than we are. Instead of trying to focus in on the close-up view, it may be more effective to stand back some, to lengthen our focal point as a way to see things more clearly.
Consider again Warren Schmidt. When he tried to move in too closely on his daughter’s life, when he attempted to micromanage the details of her wedding and marriage, she roundly rejected him. But when he stepped back, when he turned the spotlight around and allowed another to see him (as he did with his pen-pal Ndugo), he had great success.
Of course, it’s tough to feel as if we’re making a difference when people, especially young people whom we are trying to connect with, aren’t responding to us as we’d most like them to. And it’s certainly the case that every generation needs to make its own mistakes.
However, if we rediscover our passions and live in a manner consistent with them, we can’t help but engage others, young and old, in the work that gives our life meaning.
Embracing Life
Psychologist Erik Erikson suggested that in mid-life we confront the essential task of caring for future generations. He called the development of this special form of caring “generativity.” Much recent research supports this notion that social caring is an essential ingredient of vital aging. George Vaillant reports in his groundbreaking book, Aging Well, that people who successfully embrace the task of generativity at mid-life are three times as likely to be happy than those who don’t during the years that follow. Many people who report aging successfully also say that they are experiencing a greater sense of purpose, compassion, and generosity than in the first half of their lives.
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We see this all the time in the lives of vital elders around us. People who, in the second half of their lives, are contributing something of meaning to others in the first half of theirs, typically impress us with their energy, liveliness, and joy. Nor has popular culture failed to recognize this either.
In the classic 1970s comedy, Harold and Maude, Ruth Gordon plays Maude, a 79-year-old woman whose consummate zest for life ultimately overcomes the world-weary angst of 20-year-old Harold, played by Bud Cort. At the beginning of the film, Harold is obsessed with death; he fakes suicide dozens of times and attends funerals of strangers just to feed his morbid curiosity. Life for Harold is nearly devoid of meaning; he has no real passion for anything; he’s just going though the motions, waiting around to eventually die himself.
Maude, by contrast, is a life lover. Even though (as we eventually learn) she is suffering from a terminal disease, she embraces everything in and about the world. She loves animals, sunsets, and flowers and drinks in all the beauty and joy she can find.
As the story unfolds, Harold eventually comes to adopt Maude’s attitude. It happens slowly, over time, through a series of adventures in which Maude helps Harold to see how wonderful life really is—at least when you believe that it is.
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The source of Maude’s zest for life is her love for all of humanity, which she calls “her species.” Whereas Harold wants little or nothing to do with anyone, Maude wants everything to do with everyone. She gets off on talking to strangers and delights in conversations with people from all walks of life.
Harold comes to love Maude and her way of looking at the world. As a result of her influence, he, too, learns to embrace life. Even when, at the end of the film, Maude passes away, Harold sees the beauty in the circle of life. In the movie’s final scene, he strums a banjo hopefully, Maude’s spirit carrying him forward to the future.
In many ways, Maude is a model for what it means to be a new elder and what it takes to live a vital and generative life for all of one’s life. She never stops caring about the world and the people in it; she never stops being a learner; and she never stops wanting to make a difference in the lives of others.
Since we are not all 79-year-old women with a wonderfully eccentric view on things, it may be somewhat more challenging for us than it was for Maude to engage the affection and interests of young people. Most of us already have quite full lives that do not (as does Maude’s) involve attending random funerals and stealing the cars of attendees. This doesn’t mean, however, that we can’t find creative and effective ways of caring about future generations in a manner that gives meaning to all parties involved. The structure of our caring creates meaning in our lives.
It’s Not What’s On the Outside
Few if any of us are completely immune to the attractions of eternal youth. Most of us wouldn’t mind appearing younger and having the physical energy we did as teenagers. And sooner or later, nearly everyone tries to turn back the clock one way or another with a new diet, a revamped exercise program, a fresh wardrobe, a dye job, or even a little nip-and-tuck here or there. There’s nothing wrong with any of these approaches, as long as we keep in mind that they are working on the form of things, rather than its essence.
Aging has inevitable physical manifestations, and it’s perfectly natural, especially in contemporary culture, to want to limit those to some degree. But it’s a mistake to think that just by making ourselves look younger, we somehow will be more able to stay young and stay connected.
Dave knows this firsthand.
Some years ago, feeling the first real intimations that I wasn’t a youngster anymore, I undertook a pretty complete overhaul from the outside in. I bought some new “vintage” outfits, upgraded my CD collection, got new eyeglass frames, and even dyed my hair blond in hopes of connecting more completely with my younger self as well as my younger colleagues, students, and community members. I wouldn’t say it was totally unsuccessful; I loved the amazed reactions of the fifth graders I was working with when I showed up with bleached hair, but a few incidents really brought home to me that it’s not what’s on the outside that enables us to connect across the years; it’s what’s on the inside.
The first of these is a simple comment made by one of my fifth grade students, a remarkably self-possessed and insightful girl named Sophie. While most of her classmates were shocked and/or delighted by my surfer-dude coiffure, Sophie just looked at me curiously and asked, “Why did you do that? Maybe you think you look younger, but anyone can see it makes you seem so old!”
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Of course, she had hit the nail on the head. While my new “do” may have made me appear younger physically, (and that might be debatable, too) it doubtless also—to people with real insight—made me look more like an old guy trying to look young. And nothing makes someone seem older than that.
Second, while appearances can be deceiving, even pleasantly so, they don’t really change the reality of the situation. So, when I went out one evening to see a concert by a band popular among kids young enough to be my kids, my bleached blond hair and groovy retro vintage threads didn’t change how weird I felt when the band launched into a song advocating the annihilation of baby boomers.
Ultimately, I felt as if I was wasting a lot of my time focusing on the form of things rather than the essence. If I wanted to connect better with young people, instead of trying to look like them or act like them, it made more sense for me to get a clearer idea of what I could offer them.
So, for instance, at that time, I was also teaching a philosophy class to ninth through twelfth grade students at an alternative school-within-a-school program at a large suburban high school. Their interests were quite varied, but they shared a common zeal for challenging the status quo on issues with implications for social and political justice. Many, for instance, were animal rights activists; others held strong views about the enforcement of drug laws; still others had strong convictions about abortion rights. What I was able to offer them, and what they responded quite positively to, was some in-depth analysis of arguments in support of or contrary to their positions. We spent about a month together developing justifications for and against the various views they held. A number of students were quite excited about having better tools to argue for their beliefs. Some students even came to modify their positions as a result of exploring the arguments pro and con.
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For the most part, they came to really value the guidance and direction I was able to offer. I felt as if they appreciated me for who I was, not what I looked like; they came to see me as a valuable resource in their ongoing education and development.
Plus, it didn’t hurt that I agreed to dye my hair blue if they all completed their assignments on time. They did, and I did, too.
Younger Elders
We have suggested on a number of occasions that becoming a new elder is not solely a matter of chronology. There’s no guarantee we will get wiser just by getting older. That said, there is certainly a correlation between age and wisdom. The lessons we explore in this book are primarily for and from people in the second half of their lives.
That said, there is still much we can learn from people who are much younger than we are. As a matter of fact, one of the most enduring qualities of new elders is their willingness to be open to and appreciative of learning from people in the first half of life. Socrates, of course, spent most of his time talking to the youth of Athens—and in fact, was accused of corrupting them. But just as much, it was they who “corrupted” him.
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Andrew G. was the oldest kid out of twelve in Dave’s summer philosophy class. Most of the students were getting ready to enter sixth grade; Andrew was going into seventh. All the boys in the class were constantly trying to wrestle with him; they all viewed Andrew as the alpha male. All the girls in the class were constantly teasing him and messing with his stuff; they all had crushes on him. Andrew took this all in stride, though. He had a great sense of humor and a very mature outlook on life. He was the classroom peacemaker when things got out of hand. On numerous occasions, he broke up arguments with a joke or kind word. He also was an instigator for fun; he’s the one who lobbied Dave to let the class watch Monty Python movies—episodes that had philosophical import, of course.
Andrew emerged as a real classroom leader; he embodied many of the qualities of a new elder: He knew who he was; he knew where he belonged; he cared deeply for things; and he had a sense of his life’s purpose. It didn’t matter that he was two months shy of his 13th birthday; he was still the wise elder to his classmates in the classroom community.
Jasmin W. was student body president at the University of Washington. A senior, she had been active in campus and community politics throughout her four years in college. She was an activist for social justice, a fighter for affordable tuition, and passionate advocate for underrepresented student groups. Her commitment to the common good characterized her entire tenure as student body president and typified the wisdom she embodied at a mere 21 years old. She too was a younger elder.
Jake M. was making his third trip to Israel as a member of the International Solidarity Movement—ISM a nongovernmental, nonpartisan group of internationals who make regular pilgrimages to the occupied lands in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip to bear witness to the ongoing conflict between Palestinians and Israelis. Jake became involved with the ISM after his two-year tour in the Peace Corps; this followed four years of writing and editing an alternative newspaper called Ruckus, a publication of a student-run anarchist collective in Seattle. Jake’s decade-long commitment to social justice made him a wise elder among his ISM colleagues. They depended on his vision, his experience, his commitment to solutions that worked for all, and his calm perspective on the often quite dangerous situations in which they found themselves. Jake was only 25 years old.
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These three examples highlight an insight that bears repeating: Being a new elder is not entirely a chronological state. While most new elders are indeed somewhat older (especially than these examples), it is important to remember that becoming a new elder is more a state of being than a number on one’s driver’s license.
For those of us who are of an age more commonly associated with people who are elders, this is an important thing to remember: It’s not how old we are, but how whole we are. Being an elder is more about growing whole than growing old.
New Elder
Richard Peterson
The word “elder”itself often produces negative reactions. Many people in their second half assume that “elder” refers to someone older than they are. Fifty-year-olds think elders are at least 60; 60-year-olds think elderhood starts at 70; 70-year-olds push it out towards 80.
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When Katherine Hepburn, in the film On Golden Pond, tells Henry Fonda that they should get together with another “middle-aged couple”like themselves,Fonda replies,“We’re not middle-aged. People don’t live to be a hundred and fifty!”
Many of us resist using any word that connotes “elder”to identify ourselves because it drives home two truths: one,that we’re not young anymore,and two,that life has an ending point—and it’s not 150!
In the process of denying aging,many dismiss the signals, hoping that by ignoring them,they will go away. Not Richard Peterson,however.
Richard’s discovery of a major signal of age—prostate cancer—gave him,he says, a clear message:“It’s time to wake up! Something was happening to me; I was undergoing a transformation and cancer was the signal. I could choose to deny it,but ultimately, I had to recognize that my passage into elderhood was beginning. I needed to get on purpose with my life.
At 68,Richard has become one of the premier life and financial coaches in the country. Following a successful executive career,including the presidency of both Vail and Durango Ski Corporations, he reinvented himself at the Hudson Institute in Santa Barbara, California.
“For me,”he says,“coaching is a creative experience. I have discovered that I can access what I need to help my clients get what they need. I just don’t have room for a grumpy day anymore. Through my experience with cancer, I am now able to wake up and be totally grateful. I’m alive for life. My purpose is to show up for every day with a smile.”
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The cessation of old self-limiting patterns and the initiation of new healing ones are tangible evidence of the transformative power of purpose in the second half of life. These endings represent a kind of death while the new beginnings are a form of rebirth—a means by which we take ownership of our emerging wisdom and claim our place at the fire. When we focus our energies in this way—body,mind,and spirit—we can change deeply ingrained patterns of behavior in the second half of life. Indeed,new elderhood is possible only when it draws from these deeper spiritual dimensions.
“Becoming an elder,”Richard claims,“means being with the people I love, in the place I love,doing my coaching work on purpose. I can honestly say that there is not one of my current clients whom I don’t love. And I don’t have relationships anymore that are toxic. A high percentage of my clients are in their 30s and 40s.They chose me because of my age—they want me as a mentor; they want my ‘wisdom.’”
Richard defines wisdom as “being able to access what’s really important in the moment. I’m living with cancer. It’s there all the time. I want to live in the moment as many days as possible with the highest quality of life that I can. The wisdom is to keep things simple and to push the unessential aside. Cancer keeps me present.”
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Old Ideas for New Times
In our earlier book, Whistle While You Work: Heeding Your Life’s Calling, we explored the topic of calling, which we defined as “the inner urge to give your gifts away.” Our calling is expressed in the things that we do most naturally, those things we do well but never had to learn. We respond to our calling by bringing forth our gifts on something we care deeply about. Meaningful work, at any stage of life, is work through which we express our calling on projects about which we are passionate.
John Davis discovered his calling rather early in life; finding a way to express it took somewhat longer. Today, although he is a bit younger than most of the other new elders we profile, John nevertheless has the sort of passion for his calling that is typical of new elders. And perhaps more typically, the expression of his calling has had a wide-ranging effect, one that has allowed and inspired others to passionately express their callings as well.
When John graduated from art school, he didn’t know what to do with himself or his degree. Ultimately, he decided that the only way he could make a living would be to set up a community arts organization and make himself the director of it. So, after spending some time driving around his home state of Minnesota, he happened upon New York Mills, a small town, population 972, where, with the help of a number of community grants, he managed to buy and fix up a large rundown building on Main Street and set up the New York Mills Cultural Center and Arts Retreat. Once settled, he turned the center into a hub of thriving activity, including musical performances, gallery exhibits, a retreat program for artists from across the country, and summer arts classes for children and adults.
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Soon afterward, John got the idea to start the Great Midwestern Think-Off, a philosophy contest for ordinary people. John believed that there is much untapped wisdom outside of academia and wanted to create a showcase for it. The first Think-Off was held in 1993 when the final four contestants came to New York Mills, Minnesota, to defend their positions on the nature of humankind—is it inherently good or inherently evil? The competition was wildly successful and eventually became, in later years, the Great American Think-Off, an annual contest that attracts hundreds of entries from around the country.
Dave, who shares John Davis’s view about the untapped philosophical wisdom of “nonphilosophers,” has entered the contest nearly every year since its inception. In 2003, in keeping with a practice had he started a few years earlier, Dave integrated the Think-Off competition into his college-level teaching:
I had all the students in my winter-quarter Introduction to Philosophy class submit an entry as their final project. Because I wanted to model for them what I thought would be a viable entry, I wrote one, too, and submitted it, as well. The question for the 2003 competition was “Do You Reap What You Sow?”
In my essay, I argued that we don’t reap what we sow, using several examples of failed attempts at gardening in my youth.
We held a Think-Off competition in my class. All papers were submitted and reviewed anonymously. I was delighted when mine was not chosen as a finalist; it warmed my heart as a teacher to see that the class thought their own papers were superior to mine, especially when it came out later that the national competition judges had selected my essay as one of the finalists.
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Attending the Think-Off finals in New York Mills, Minnesota was a delight and, more importantly, a powerful reminder about the power of passion—what we care about—in our lives. The three other finalists and I were treated like royalty in the small town; we got to ride on a float in the annual Think-Off parade and be cheered all along the parade route. Some 400 people showed up at the town’s gymnasium to hear us deliver our essays and debate the topic. No special effects, no car crashes, just individuals standing at a podium sharing their beliefs. One of the finalists, Arthur Yuwiler, was a 76-year-old retired biochemist. Arthur is truly a new elder. In the years since retirement, he has cultivated an interest in drawing, painting, and wood sculpture. But most prominently, he has cultivated his lifelong interest in creative thinking and writing. His passion for ideas was infectious and we found ourselves, all weekend long, having great conversations with him on all sorts of subjects. Seeing him up on stage, as he delivered his very moving essay in which he argued, drawing on the tragic example of his autistic grandson, that we do not reap what we sow, one could really see the boy in the man. The sharing of ideas that he cared about brought him alive in a way that few other activities could have.
While the audience for the Think-Off was mostly older folks, there were plenty of teenagers and young kids, too. And this, I think, is the real message of the Think-Off. It reminds us of the hunger that people of all ages have for passionate ideas. We’re captivated by serious inquiry into serious matters. We want answers to the questions that really matter.
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Or, to put it another way, we feel a powerful need to be around the fire and hear what those who have claimed their place have to say.
New Elder
Marilyn Whitcomb
Marilyn’s story is far from unique—but it is,at least in part, the very typicality of her story that makes it so poignant. A stay-at-home mom for 25 years,Marilyn found herself in her late 40s facing the predictable challenges associated with the empty nest when the last of her three kids went off to college.
Marilyn spent some time redecorating her house, doing volunteer work,and catching up on her gardening, but it wasn’t enough. She felt she needed something more,something she was really passionate about.
Marilyn reflected on what she cared most deeply about. She recalled how much she loved her English classes in high school and college and thought about all the novels that had meant so much to her over the years. “I’d always loved reading,”she said,“books are one of the things that carried me through all the years. All the time I was raising my kids,books were my solace;when times were tough, I always had a book to read.”
“When I was in school,though,I never thought it was practical to study English; it seemed like a luxury for kids who had money or trust funds. That’s what’s so inspiring about what I’m doing now;maybe it won’t easily lead to some sort of job,but I’m studying what I really care about.”
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Marilyn is a graduate student in the Comparative Literature department at the University of Washington. At 52, she’s twice as old as many of her fellow grads,but that doesn’t faze her a bit.“That just gives me twice as much perspective on the readings as they have,”she laughs. “Plus,some of the writers we read—like Saul Bellow or Norman Mailer—writers they think are ‘old guys,’ I consider my contemporaries. That gives me special insight into them that the other students don’t have.”
Marilyn isn’t sure where her studies are going to take her.“I’m two years into a Ph.D.program that usually takes people eight to ten years. That means I might be 60 by the time I’m done. I guess I could be worried about that,but I’m not. Right now,I’m doing what I love—studying,writing about,and,as a graduate teaching assistant, instructing others—in literature. In eight years I’ll be 60 whether I do this or not. So, there’s nothing to be lost by doing it and everything—including my heartfelt passion—by not.”
Old Dogs and New Tricks
One of the common barriers to growth and fulfillment in the second half is the notion that “it’s too late.” This is false. As long as what we’re striving for is personal mastery—as opposed to say, Olympic Team membership—it’s never too late.
Dave remembers talking to his friend’s mother when he was a mere lad of 16. He was telling her about how he had just begun learning to play the flute. “Oh,” she said, with an implied reference to her own son, who began taking piano lessons at age 4, “you’re sort of a Johnny-come-lately to music, aren’t you?”
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At 16 years old, a Johnny-come-lately? Hardly. Perhaps a 16-year-old who takes up a musical instrument may be too late to be a child prodigy, but he certainly is far from too late to develop a real expertise with the instrument and derive great satisfaction from playing it the rest of his life.
Same goes for someone at 50. Or 60. Or 70 or even 80. While it’s true that, when we’re younger, it tends to be easier to learn new things, especially things like language, there’s no reason we can’t take up new things much later in life. Tolstoy famously began learning Greek in his 70s so he could read Homer in the original. World-renowned cellist Pablo Casals was quoted as saying the reason he continued diligent daily practice into his 90s was that he thought he was getting better. Millions of lesser known individuals have taken up new skills far into their most advanced years.
Many others, though, refrain from doing so, claiming, “Oh, I’m just too old to learn.” And while it is true that few over-50s will ever learn to shred some gnarly skateboard moves on a vertical pipe, any number of avenues of learning are open to people of any age.
The real challenge is to be able to look ahead and imagine that you will be able to learn what you set out to. At 16, this is pretty easy. We can forecast how good we’ll be at the flute or guitar or French in ten years, at age 26. At 50, it seems harder to predict our success by age 60. But it shouldn’t be. Ten years is still ten years; there’s no particular reason (other than the difficulties of making time for new things in our later years) why we shouldn’t be able to make as much progress at something from ages 50 to 60 as at ages 16 to 26. Moreover, by age 50, we should have two additional advantages. First, we will presumably have gained all sorts of perspectives that we didn’t have as young people. We will understand our learning styles better; we’ll have learned how to learn in new and more effective ways. Also, we’ll have had loads more experience in what time means. At age 16, for example, ten years is an eternity. The very idea of sticking with something for a decade seems hardly conceivable. At age 50 or higher, ten years seems like a fairly small amount of time. The idea that we’ll spend a decade practicing the guitar, or yoga, or learning Greek turns out to sound quite manageable. Like Woody Allen says, “I have ties older than that.”
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New Elder
Dr. Alvin P. Shapiro
Dave says: From a professional standpoint,my dad,Dr. Alvin P.Shapiro, had done it all. A physician, a full professor on the medical faculty at the University of Pittsburgh, he had achieved the highest possible status in his profession and won the abiding respect of colleagues throughout academia and the scientific community. In his over 30-year association with the university,he had held a number of impressive positions,including Dean of Students for the Medical School and Chairman of the Department of Medicine. Now,at age 65,he was entering the period of his career at which many of his colleagues tended to sit back and let the accolades roll in. He could pursue his own “pet projects”and,being a highly respected tenured professor,no one would dare raise an eyebrow against him. Moreover,having had open-heart surgery just a few years earlier,who could possibly begrudge the good doctor if he slowed down a bit? Wouldn’t it be only natural for him to gradually disengage himself from the day-to-day dramas of the medical school world?
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Natural,perhaps,but not at all what my dad had chosen to do. Whereas many of his medical contemporaries were reducing their clinic hours and beginning to work on their memoirs,Al was diving headfirst into a new project, a new hospital,a whole new class of medical students who faced challenges quite a bit different than the fairly privileged young doctors he had worked with at the University of Pittsburgh.
At age 65,my dad had chosen to take on the task of directing the Medicine Training Program at Shadyside Hospital,a teaching hospital in Pittsburgh whose doctors and patients were far more diverse than those across town at his former job. A good portion of the young residents he would now be working with were immigrants to the United States. There were graduates from medical schools in India,Pakistan,Russia,and Grenada,along with those from many smaller schools throughout the United States. The patients at Shadyside Hospital,too,tended to represent a broad swath of social, cultural,and economic differences. A local hospital whose reputation,though solid,was not quite as impressive as the Presbyterian Hospital at the University of Pittsburgh, Shadyside Hospital served a community more representative of Pittsburgh’s population than its crosstown medical center.
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So why was Dad doing this? Why was he choosing to blaze a new career path when he could have easily been resting on his laurels?
The answer is given in a humorous quote that my dad shared with me at the time:“Illegitimi non carborundum.” This made-up Latin phrase means “Don’t let the bastards grind you down.”Dad explained to me that the medical teaching profession,at least as it was being conducted at the university at that time,was quite a bit different than what had originally drawn him to it. His passion was in helping young medical students to become real doctors— healers—who were dedicated to combining the best science possible with the most authentically human response to patients. He said that he felt some schools overemphasized technological solutions that did little to train students in what they really needed to assist patients.
He told me a story about how one of his younger colleagues at his former school instructed some residents in diagnostic techniques using a computer-based artificial-intelligence expert system. While not at all a neo-Luddite (my dad was one of the first physicians he knew who owned a computer; in his 50s,he even taught himself some programming),he nevertheless found it odd that the students weren’t being shown the simple method that allowed a physician like himself to successfully diagnose the patient’s condition from a five-minute examination of his eye movements and skin tone.
Plus,he also wanted to work with more students who, like himself,had come to the medical profession from rather modest backgrounds. A son of a shopkeeper on Staten Island,New York,Dad had few financial or cultural advantages to help him succeed in his profession. Many students at the larger medical schools were sons or daughters of physicians—they had all the help they needed. At Shadyside,though,my dad felt he could give his students the sort of opportunities he had to make something of themselves.
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The transitions my dad was facing weren’t going to be easy; he faced a new setting,new colleagues,new responsibilities, even a new commute from home. But facing those transitions was,he believed,the very thing that gave his professional—and by extension,his personal—life meaning. As he explained to me,he was far too old to have to do any of this,but far too young not to.
Keeping Hope Alive
We want to make a connection between a renewed sense of calling and a renewed sense of hope. One of the most common— and most tragic—complaints of people in the second half of life is that they’ve “lost hope.” This is quite understandable. When we feel alienated from our stories or our sense of place or, most importantly, a feeling of passion about what we’re doing, it’s not surprising that we would feel somewhat hopeless.
But what is hope? The American Heritage Dictionary defines it as “A wish or desire accompanied by confident expectation of its fulfillment.” So, there are two elements: the wish and the expectation.
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To wish for something is to aspire to it. Aspire comes from the Latin root meaning “breathe,” which is also connected to the word for spirit. The breath, in many theological traditions, is intimately a part of spirit. Prana, for instance, the life force in the Hindu tradition, is synonymous with the breath. Or chi, in Chinese theology and medicine, also has its source in the breath. For that matter, the Holy Spirit in Christianity is often associated with the breath.
To hope, then, is in a very real manner of speaking, to breathe. We all know, for instance, that when we’re scared or anxious or depressed—when we lose hope—how difficult it is to get air into our lungs. And we know that one of the most effective ways to begin to re-center ourselves and overcome our fear, is to refocus upon and recover our breathing.
We can say, then, that keeping hope alive means to keep our breath alive. To hope is to breathe with the confident expectation of our ongoing fulfillment, to aspire for something better, to keep wishing that our all dreams will come true.
So how is this done in the second half of life? How do we keep hope alive when so much of what we have always hoped for—success at work, increased monetary rewards, improved health—may not be available to us?
The answer, we think, is somewhat paradoxical. Normally, we think of hope as a forward-looking emotion—and it is. But here, we want to conceive of the forward-looking as a kind of backward-looking, too.
What we mean by this is that our hope is not just for tomorrow but is also a kind of hope for the past. It is a hope for our own past—that the past we have lived has had a meaning, has been for something, that we have made a difference in someone’s life, not just our own.
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Keeping this hope for the past alive involves taking stock of our life and the choices we’ve made in it. It means looking back over what we’ve done and thinking about how we’ve gotten where we are and why. This doesn’t mean we should overanalyze and get bogged down in regret—for none of us has lived a life that couldn’t be better—rather, it means we need to reflect upon our choices in a manner that allows us to put them in perspective. We have to take into account the circumstances under which we made those choices in the first place. So, for instance, even though we may wish that “we knew then what we know now,” it’s incumbent upon us to realize that this just wasn’t the case: We did the best we could with the information we had. We can’t change the past.
What we can do, however, is change the future based on the past. And in this way, keep hope for tomorrow—and for yesterday, as well—alive.
The key to hope is having something to look forward to. And what’s key to that is doing something that will potentially bear fruit in the future. It’s not enough to merely have some outcome or event to anticipate; hope is not particularly inspired simply by looking forward to the release of the next Harry Potter book or Superbowl XLIII. Rather, hope is stimulated when the outcome or event we anticipate is something we’ve contributed to. And it doesn’t have to be something great or earth-shattering; planting a vegetable garden will do.
That said, hope is most powerfully stimulated by taking part in something that will bear fruit in the lives of others. Sowing a vegetable garden is good; sowing a human garden is even better.
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Ask yourself: What am I hoping for? And which of these hopes involve me more directly in the lives of others? The outcomes whose success you contribute to are those that offer you the greatest potential for keeping the fire of hope burning most brightly—and in this way, reignite your passion for the second half of your life.
Fireside Chat
What Do I Care About?
This fireside chat encourages dialogue around how to renew our calling and reignite our passions by making connections with our youth. Ideally, this fireside chat would include a new elder and one or more younger people. If that’s not possible, though, it can still be valuable and successful as a conversation between people of similar ages.
As always, the success of this fireside chat can be enhanced by creating an environment that draws upon the ancient power of the fire. If you can manage to set this up outside, around an actual fire, so much the better. If not, we really do encourage you to speak by candlelight if possible.
The Firestarter Question
What is the gift, lesson, or legacy you most want to pass on to those who follow you? Why?
Encourage all your fireside partners to contribute to the discussion. Speak your minds. Speak from the heart. Keep the fire of dialogue alive!
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Tending the Fire
The Fire of Passion: What Do I Care About?
The word “enthusiasm” comes from the Greek, enthousiasmos—to be possessed—en theos, “in God.” What are you enthusiastic or “in God” about?
Think of the new elders you know who have real enthusiasm about what they do. Think of those folks who are so passionate and committed to their vocation that you can hardly picture them doing anything else. What core characteristics do these new elders have in common?
Now get a copy of today’s paper—or even better, the most recent Sunday paper. Review every single page: the news, editorials, features, sports, business, comics, society, entertainment, world and local events, want ads, even the obituaries. What things grab your attention? What themes or issues do you naturally migrate to? Highlight three things that really move you, about which you feel “Someone really needs to do something.”
What most excites you in or about the world? What most angers you? What do you care about most deeply? If you could teach three things to others, what would you teach? Who would you teach it to?
“Nothing great was ever achieved without enthusiasm,” wrote Emerson. A deep enthusiasm, especially for something undertaken with vitality and verve, is how even “unremarkable” people can achieve something remarkable. Enthusiasm is probably the one most common feature among the new elders we have interviewed for this book.
Enthusiasm is the active component of our life’s passions. Passion is the fuel of which enthusiasm is the flame. Our passions are what keep the fire burning in the second half of life.
Renewing our calling, and so, reigniting our passions, enables us to spark our own enthusiasm and, just as importantly, the enthusiasm of young people. The actual stories we tell may be forgotten, but our living passion is an inspiring power.
Passion is inextricably linked to vital aging. New elders with a real zest for the second half of life draw upon their passions to keep them going while contemporaries are slumbering. They are passionately growing whole, not old.