Tag: midlife

Second Act

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The title of “Second Act” itself proves to be underselling what the book has to offer: Mr. Oliver is really assembling a guide to the broader principles that make a strong career. There is an importance to slow and steady progress, to showing up and doing the work. A chapter on aging explores how an important requirement of a successful career is simply to be consistent: to improve, to try new things, and to keep creating output. Similarly, Mr. Oliver demonstrates that fears about the inevitable cognitive decline that comes with getting older are likely overblown and our capacity for innovation and wisdom later in life is undervalued. Achievement, he suggests, “isn’t reliant just on our mental ability staying high but on whether we choose to keep using and adapting the capacity we have.”

— Samuel Arbesman, from ‘Second Act’ Review: Better Late Than Never. Some of the greatest triumphs in art, business and politics have been accomplished by those who might have been seen as past their prime.’

A Book Review of Henry Oliver’s “Second Act: What Late Bloomers Can Tell You About Success and Reinventing Your Life.” (John Murray One, May 9, 2024)

TGIF: Schitt$ Creek

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“Moira, it’s like on the inside I feel like I’m 19 years old, and then I catch a glipse of myself in the mirror, and I realize that I’m so…not.”

“Oh, Jocelyn, you’ll soon learn that we aging mortals are blessed with weakening eyes and memories so that we really don’t have to see ourselves. If you love the number 19, you go be 19.”

~ Schitt$ Creek, S5: E5 “Rock On!”

Don’t miss top Moira Rose clips on Schitt’s Creek: Click Here.

Monday Morning Wake-Up Call

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At fifty-four, I’m now roughly the same age Dante was when he was putting the finishing touches on The Divine Comedy. I’m the same age as von Aschenbach in Thomas Mann’s Death in Venice. (I realized only recently that the character in this novella who was pining for a youth and his own lost youth was squarely in middle age; not having read the opening very carefully, I had always assumed that the “old” man who allowed the hotel barber to dye his hair jet black and garishly paint his face was in his seventies at the very least.) Fifty-plus is a good age for big questions. Unless I’m that rare soul who makes it past one hundred, I probably have less time ahead of me than I’ve already lived. Now that my brother, sister, and I are all over fifty, my brother, using a golf analogy, refers to our lives as being played on the back nine—the first nine holes are behind us. Whatever score we’ve accumulated, we carry with us. Suddenly, finishing honorably and staying out of the sand traps and water hazards matters more than seeing our names on the leaderboard. On the other hand, I think any age is a good age for big questions. I asked some of my biggest and best when I was in high school and college—fittingly, as that’s what school is for. I asked other big questions at painful times in my life—no age is immune from misfortune or feels it less keenly. And I hope and expect to be asking big questions right up to the end.

~ Will Schwalbe, Books for a Living

Notes:

little tummy roll that has helpfully crept over the bottom of the iPad, so that it might help you type?

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Anne Lamott, from a Facebook post on November 25, 2012:

Quickly, and probably with lots of typos: I am beginning to think that this body of mine is the one I will have the entire time I am on this side of eternity.

I didn’t agree to this. I have tried for approximately fifty years to get it to be an ever so slightly different body: maybe the tiniest bit more like Cindy Crawford’s, and–if this is not too much to ask–Michelle Obama’s arms. I mean, is this so much to ask? But I had to ask myself, while eating my second piece of key lime pie in Miami last Sunday, and then again, while sampling my second piece of Crete brûlée in Akron, if this is going to happen.

For the record, I do not usually eat like I do in hotels while I am on book tour. But I have a terrble sweet tooth and I am just not going to be spending much more of this and precious life at the gym, than I already do, which is at best, three times a week, in a terrible shirking bad attitude bitter frame of mind. I go for three one-hour hikes a week. I’m not a Lunges kind of girl.
And even if I were, I’m shrinking. I’m not quite Dr. Ruth yet, but I used to be 5’7, and now am–well, not.

But the psalmist says I am wonderfully and fearfully made. Now, upon hearing that, two days after Thanksgiving, don’t you automatically think that “fearfully” refers to your thighs, your upper arms, the little tummy roll that has helpfully crept over the bottom of the iPad, so that it might help you type? Continue reading “little tummy roll that has helpfully crept over the bottom of the iPad, so that it might help you type?” →

Lightly child, lightly.

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birds-shoulder-mystery-happiness

There ain’t no answer…
There never was an answer
There will never be an answer
That’s the answer

You are always the same age inside

One does not get better
But different and older
And that is always a pleasure

One must dare to be happy

~ Gertrude Stein, Useful Knowledge

Notes:

  • Photo: via Hidden Sanctuary. Poem. Thank you Beth @ Alive on All Channels
  • Prior “Lightly child, lightly” Posts? Connect here.
  • Post Title & Inspiration: Aldous Huxley: “It’s dark because you are trying too hard. Lightly child, lightly. Learn to do everything lightly. Yes, feel lightly even though you’re feeling deeply. Just lightly let things happen and lightly cope with them.”