Earlier this week, I was talking to a client who was confused about a particular feeling he sometimes experiences. “Sometimes, inside, I still feel like a kid. I suspect it’s just that I’m immature.” My client isn’t immature, and I had a slightly different take on the source of his feeling like a kid. I suggested to him that his feeling was not a sign of immaturity, but instead was a signal that he could still feel the sheer aliveness that animated him. In most adults, that feeling of sheer aliveness has faded or has been veiled by lots of ideas about how we “should” be at a certain age.

Understanding Resistance and Suffering Note: This is another in a series of blogs related to a book project I’ve been writing. The book is called, The Slightly Older Person’s Guide to Graceful Aging. If there was something you’re doing that made suffering feel like a constant part of your life, would you want to know about it? This particular thing is most likely to be done without you even being aware of doing it. It seems to be “just the way life is,” rather than something you’re doing. Whenever we’re suffering, in whatever form, physically or mentally, it comes down to a single reason: we suffer whenever we resist the

Can I Be in Pain and Still See Life as a Miracle? Note: This is another in a series of blogs related to a book project I’ve been writing. The book is called, The Slightly Older Person’s Guide to Graceful Aging. Being in physical pain is no one’s idea of a good time. I’ve discovered from my own experience that when the pain seemed constant and unrelenting, it became difficult for me to see my life as the miracle it is. Pain, especially constant pain, can easily undermine our sense of well-being. When well-being seems to have gone absent, it can feel like the miracle has been drained from our

Do Your Special Qualities Define Who You Really Are? Note: This is another in a series of blogs related to a book I’ve been writing. The book is called, The Slightly Older Person’s Guide to Graceful Aging. If the quality or qualities you believe make you special were to evaporate, would you know who you are? I’m deliberately asking what I know to be a loaded question. It’s common for us to define who we are by what we believe makes us stand apart from the mass of humanity. If you ask people to define themselves, they’ll invariably go to the skills, abilities, and features they believe set them apart. It’s a

Note: This is another in a series of blogs related to a book project I’ve been writing for some months. The book is called, The Slightly Older Person’s Guide to Graceful Aging. Though there is only one universe, the quality of our thinking can determine which one one of two conceptual universes we seem to inhabit. There’s the universe of one, and the universe of oneness. Though they may sound alike, they’re as different as our concepts of heaven and hell. The universe of one depends on an illusion most of us take as truth: that we’re all separate individuals with no underlying connection to one another. In other words, our sense of “I”

Note: This is another in a series of blogs related to a book project I’ve been writing for some months. The book is called, The Slightly Older Person’s Guide to Graceful Aging. What would your life be like if you were viewing it through a pair of glasses you never took off and that were both filthy, and the wrong prescription? What you’d think you were seeing would probably have no relationship to what was actually in front of you. Wearing these glasses, how good could the quality of your life possibly be? Believe it or not, we all do this to ourselves without even knowing it. The means by which we

Note: This is the second in a series of blogs related to a book project I’ve been writing for some months. The book is called, The Slightly Older Person’s Guide to Graceful Aging. What sort of beliefs do you have about getting and being older? What if most of what you think you know about old age turned out to be untrue? Here’s the good news; most, if not all of what you may believe about old age has no basis in truth. From the time we’re very young, our beliefs about aging, and dying, are conditioned by the opinions of those around us, and the messages society sends us. These beliefs fall

Note: This is the third in a series of blogs related to a book project I’ve been writing for some months. The book is called, The Slightly Older Person’s Guide to Graceful Aging. Let’s say you have what feels like a big decision in front of you. Where do you start? Most of us will probably start by attempting to think our way through the decision. That’s completely understandable, but it’s probably not where the best decisions you’ve made have come from. When people describe decisions they’ve made, especially those that worked out well, how are they likely to describe what happened? How often do you hear someone talk about a recent

Most of What You Think You Know About Aging is Untrue Note: This is the first in a series of blogs related to a book project I’ve been writing for some months. The book is called, The Slightly Older Person’s Guide to Graceful Living. I’ll start this with a broad statement: almost everything you think you know about aging is likely to be not true. I’m talking less about the physical aspects of aging than I am about the ideas we have about aging. I’m curious about how the link between these two, the physical signs of wear and tear, and the thinking that can come from them, can work to our