Exploring New Ways Of Caring For A Generation In Transition

Short excerpts from the four, fifteen minute presentation segments

We have all spent much of our time trying to find our voice - the voice of our desires, our disappointments, our loves, our hates, our dreams, and our failures.  There is a voice in all of us that sings.  Regardless of whether we sing out loud or to ourselves or our song sad or joyous, we use our voice as a means of self expression.  We have a great adventure ahead or surrounding us - the adventure of transitioning from youth to older status - our metamorphosis.  I won’t ask you to sing.  I will ask you to think about the voice with which you sing.

We are joined by two commonalities - our lives have always been changing and we have always cared about others.  The question is what do we do when going through the big changes in this new phase of life and who do we care for when doing so? You being here is an indication you are curious, actively interested or downright desperate.  I will take you on a little journey from where you were when you arrived to where you’ll be when you leave.

As we spend the next ninety minutes together, I hope to help clarify through song and dialogue opportunities this transition offers us.  I’ll discuss the empowerment of discovering and doing anything we want and then understanding the impact of that action on those closest to us.  I also plan to focus on our relationships with the older and younger generations and how we can apply our experience to build caring communities with both.

Many of us have spent our entire lives thinking about this moment of feelin’ like dancin’ with great anticipation - to have time to do anything we want, to sing any song we want.  I found myself walking around in circles after the first few months of this glorious new phase.  I had always belonged to something - to my wife, my kids, a workforce, to other people, to a schedule.  Suddenly I was the one.  I found myself thinking, “Watch out - you might get what you wish for!”

How do we transition to some new life?  How do we get comfortable with who we are if we look in the mirror and see someone different?  How do we care for anyone else when we need to be caring for ourselves?

All caring starts with caring for ourselves yet sometimes it is much easier to think of caring for others first.  Remember You Are The One.  Many of us have been involved with community / civic service throughout our lives.  So, how is this time different?  We have more unstructured time and our children are grown up or well on their way to being so.  We have more available time.

No one can hear the songs in our head.  We must remember that there are others wanting to sing with us.  When leaving or being forced from a job or lifestyle we have had for a long time, people in our lives, who may not have been directly involved in the situation, are often affected.  When this change happens and we are home more with unstructured time trying to adjust to a certain lack of purpose, those nearest us are greatly impacted.

When in a time of major change, we all have someone who is trying to keep up with us as we sing the songs we want to sing.  Sometimes this is a wife or husband, father or mother, son or daughter, or a good friend.  We are so intent on first learning our song and then actually singing it, even if just in our heads, we often forget about those nearest us - how they are trying to keep up with where we are going, but lagging behind nonetheless.

As different as each generation seems to be, there is so much commonality.  We all start as kids and hopefully eventually grow to be old.  Having this perspective only comes with having lived through many years - through singing many songs and trying to understand other’s songs.

There’s something wonderful about growing older.  We are capable of looking across life’s experiences and sharing our perspectives, both good and bad, with those younger than us.  Sometimes no one is listening, but there are those moments we will be asked to pass on a profound insight that only comes with our experience.  We have songs we can always teach the next generation to sing!

We also find growing older brings with it a certain level of respect for this experience.  When challenging or questioning something of concern, we are afforded an ear we wouldn’t otherwise receive.  We also have a better sense of what is productive versus wasted energy.  There’s a touch of grace in aging, almost as in a dance, that we can bring to the world.

When focusing on our lives and looking back and then forward, we have a great opportunity to take that perspective and lend it out.  What we have contributed to living our lives, raising families and learning every day, is a resource beyond value.  We can keep that resource to ourselves or give it to those in need of it.

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