I was recently in Victoria leading an all-day seminar on the 10 success factors of turning retirement into a purposeful and dynamic re-engagement. When the first participant – Doug – arrived, he said with a teasing tone “you can’t teach about retirement, you don’t have any gray hair”. I appreciated his sense of humour and showed him that in fact there were many gray hairs around my temples and that I’m in the process of allowing the rest of my grey hairs to be honored as symbol of wisdom.
That moment of interaction with him helped me to put to rest the dilemma I had from time to time about whether or not to color my hair for the purpose of covering the newly emerging grey. Now I’ve decided to honour rather than conceal those symbols of wisdom. That’s right, I’m looking forward to more of the salt and pepper look and it’s going to be effortlessly done by Mother Nature herself. These grey hairs remind me that I ought to assume the role of being a keeper of wisdom along with the rest of the Boomers and the elders who came before us. But off course, I also recognize that wisdom does not just come automatically with age. It emerges as we reflect on and integrate our life experience from the greater perspective that results from decades of living through all that we have learned on this awesome journey we call Life.
Four years ago I wrote a powerful Foreword in the anthology Audacious Aging which I had initiated with a friend/publisher in California. Essentially, this text contains a call to action for us Boomers to rise up to the opportunities that are part of the second half of life. Here’s an excerpt of that Foreword:
No matter our age, each of us has the opportunity to be continuously reborn. We are reborn when we take a stand on behalf of the future and bring it forth with both our deep yearning and the power of our actions and words. We are reborn when we unleash our creativity and our fire to re-enchant the world with a love for nature and for everything alive. And we are reborn when we shed the remnants of our guarded, timid ways to reveal our true beauty, core identity, and authentic strength. These are the rebirths needed to carry the human race and the planet into the future.
We invite you to ride with us on the wings of courage, from the heightened perspective afforded by years of journeying. This book provides tools, information, and inspiration for the ride. May we all rise to the challenge of transforming our society from a youth/appearance worshipping culture into one that fosters the values of the heart, supports the evolution of consciousness, and leaves to future generations a legacy of which we can be wildly proud.
And now, four years after writing this statement, I re-affirm that its meaning still resonates deeply within me. Especially if you are in the second half of your life, I invite you to consider this invitation to allow yourself to ride on the wings of courage in new and audacious ways now and across the years of your resplendent, passionate and wise Future.
