30 Lessons for Living by Karl Pillemer Ph.D

Author:Karl Pillemer Ph.D.
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Penguin Publishing Group
Published: 2011-08-18T16:00:00+00:00

Cecile is by no means unique. If you were to sit a representative group of my eighty- and ninety-year-old experts down in a room together, they would have one clear message to address to your nagging worry about being old: get over it. Because for most of them old age has been one of life’s greatest surprises: a time of greater opportunity and contentment than they had ever imagined. And this feeling cut across income and ethnic groups.

My second surprise was the experts’ view of aging as a quest. They acknowledge that growing old is uncharted territory, a transition to a world that does not have the clear road map of middle age, with its defined career ladder and child-rearing responsibilities. But many experts described it with a sense of exploring a new land, of novel opportunities to be seized and interests to be developed. Rather than a time of decline, many of America’s elders see aging as an adventure.

Loraine Bauer isn’t a Pollyanna. She doesn’t gloss over the problems of aging; a very active and engaged person, she is irritated at age eighty-nine with the physical limitations that come with growing older. And yet she sees aging as a quest. She told me: THERE’S A QUOTATION FROM Tennyson’s poem about Ulysses, where he says, “Come, my friends, / ’Tis not too late to seek a newer world.” That has been a mantra for me my whole life. “Come, my friends, / ’Tis not too late to seek a newer world.” Even if you are a hundred years old, you know?

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.