a blog by John P. Schuster
Poets know… Be patient. Let’s teach each other how to wait, like TS Elliot taught us. I said to my soul, be still, and wait without hopeFor hope would be hope for the wrong thing…Wait without thought, for you are not ready for thought:So the darkness shall be the light, and the stillness the dancing. And Jan Richardson offers a map for uncertain times. This is not any map you know. Forget longitude. Forget latitude.[…]
Read moreRe-reading The Adult Years by Frederic Hudson, co-founder of the Hudson Institute of Coaching, I was struck by how prescient it was (much of it could be written today) and how accurately it describes the tasks and the dilemmas of adults constructing meaningful lives in times of change (he was onto this 30 years before David Brooks very current The Second Mountain. Frederic’s vision for change is profound….here is how he positioned coaches as needed[…]
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Evidence-based thinking needs its opposite sibling What wretchedness: to believe in only what can be proven. Mary Oliver The test of a first-rate intelligence is the ability to hold two opposed ideas in the mind at the same time, and still retain the ability to function. F. Scott Fitzgerald. Wisdom is discernment in action. It deepens as we learn to make more useful distinctions. We gain wisdom from experience that we reflect upon, finding patterns[…]
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Mary Oliver tribute Last month we lost one of the great poets of our time. Mary Oliver has seeped into the culture with lines like “your one wild and precious life”. She took her leave of the physical plane at age 84. Prolific, profound, much celebrated, she was rooted almost always in nature first. What a trove of poetic gems she has left us. The title for this post—pay attention, find the joy, tell about[…]
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We all see messes and problems in the world that we don’t like and want to go away. Companies losing money, teachers on strike, government shutdowns that seem unnecessary. We gain and seek information on the messes and their cause, we form our opinions, we start to voice those opinions in small or in big ways, depending on our motivations But when it comes to messes, all kinds, there is one step to take before[…]
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One of the oft-cited advantages of being in later life is an abundance of friends and relationships, forming themselves into satisfying constellations, that add so much to the quality of life. The opposite, isolation, is a scourge of aging for some who are shut in or endure tough circumstances, so the very relationship riches for some are a stark contrast to the relational poverty of others. In my life, I am blessed with constellations of[…]
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The negative aging imagination is at play in the culture. When we develop “reflexive dread” of aging, a phrase from Ashton Applewhite, we dread and revile the thought of getting older in any way. This dread is a reaction to an aging meta messages our culture indulges in aplenty—“whatever you do, don’t start aging!! It’s all downhill.” As if we had a choice, in spite of what the ads say. Granted we don’t want to[…]
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On Purpose and By Accident, We Change Our lives are tempered by our age. A baby does baby things. Kids think and act like kids. Mid-lifers have careers, raise kids or not, and do what they do. Those later on in life, like me, get to do the same. Or do we? How is your life tempered by age? Maybe you are not letting that happen and working at not letting your life be changed[…]
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