Misplaced Concern About Ageing
I'm turning 63, It's time for something new, and I'm looking to the future.
There has been a lot of discussion about the burden retirees place on society as the baby boom bulge moves towards ageing. To my mind it is applying a stereotype from a time gone by to today. It simply doesn't apply. Describing "Youth" as a discrete category was only invented in the 1960s. Before that, when children grew up they became adults, now they grew up and become youth.
There is increasingly a new demographic appearing, one that Mary Gathering Bateson calls "active wisdom". Yes, there will be some who devote a couple of decades to golf and cruises but I believe that they will become a smaller and smaller proportion of the population over time. Older people simply want to be creative and use the skills, insight and wisdom they have acquired during their working life and to make valued contributions to society.
The Hero's journey is a powerful tool in making an inventory of such qualities to move into a time of renewed creativity, service and satisfaction. In one study of tertiary graduates 20 years on 80% were unhappy with their lives. With hindsight they reflected on could haves and should haves. With a slight altering of perspective that can be turned around.
Review your skills, insights and wisdom at Soul Talks
Interestingly using the Hero's/Heroine's Journey paradigm is useful at any age or stage of life. It is the subject of my presentation this Thursday, 10th August at Soul Talks Click for more info.
I'd like to leave you with this TED Talk from Mary Gathering Bateson. It's particularly for my age group and anyone who is thinking ahead.
Flooded Memories
Dad, Me and the Wheat Board Inspector at Brookstead c.1962:This picture appeared in the "Grain Grower" newspaper with an article about the change from delivering wheat in bags to bulk handling.
Over the past two decades I have learnt a lot about Australia's first peoples, around the campfire, listening to stories, watching inma and travelling over country. Like so many "Europeans" it's a curiosity I have had since growing up on the farm in South East Queensland. We lived near the Condamine River and when it flooded, which it did more more then than it does now, the Grasstree Creek would flood and cut the road for the school bus at Yandilla. Canal Creek and the Condamine would cut the road to Pittsworth and flooding on Dog Trap Creek cut us off from Warwick. No school. Now normally it would be welcomed as providential, a bonus holiday. But not so one year, one of the few times I felt I was missing out on something by being kept home from school.
This was the middleish 60's, we'd only had the electric wireless for a couple of years and ...
Read moreIlluminating Our Personal Story - Soul Talk 10 Aug 2017
Only the past is written, the future is an exercise in our creative imagination.
Knowing Joseph Campbell's hero/heroine's journey can help us return to and maintaining the creative flow. It is especially useful when we want to create something new, express ourselves in a new way or develop a new project. Our destiny is how we make it.
I don't subscribe to the view that you can be or do anything you want, but I wholeheartedly believe that the possibilities in becoming fully yourself are inexhaustible. I am convinced that consciousness is a quantum orchestra not simply brain chemistry operating on a biological hard drive. I expect that future research will shed new light on its mechanisms. I hold as equally true that First Nations Peoples have known about these phenomena for millennia, not through science but through story, song and ceremony.
The thing is that we don't have to be neuroscientists, quantum physicists or sharmans. It is not rocket surgery. Being able to orchestrate our story with mindfulness, imagination, commitment and resolve is sufficient. There are as many tools as there are cultures to help us on that journey, each with it's own nuance, tone and perspective.
August Soul Talk
On the 10th of August I will be giving a talk in which I invite you to choose something that you would like to have happen, something that you believe is possible but not highly probable at this time, something that you are passionate about, something that would require more of yourself to come about.
It is not necessary to know how to bring it about but it may be an advantage to be open to having fortuitous things happen to assist you on your creative journey in unexpected ways.
The presentation will provide a practical introduction in realising the fruits of your creative imagination through applying the hero/heroines journey to your life.
Sometimes, it is not so much a question of how to make things happen, as knowing what you really want. I will have something to say about that too.
It's a free event, organised by the wonderful Joy Nugent and sponsored by Bird In Hand. There will be and additional two sessions in the afternoon:
- Carrie Faggotter presents Your Spirit Calling - Aligning to the signs and synchronicities of your life, and
- Anne Rogers presenting Demystifying Mindfulness
Download a copy of the Soul Talks program here.
