22 minute read
MY THIRD ACT
Note from Editor:
Carolyn Rhodes was in the process of writing her “My Third Act” story for this issue when she lost her son unexpectantly. Her dear friend and Seattle writer, Suzanne Beyer sent me this story in her stead. We send Carolyn our deepest condolences. “The silence is deafening,” wrote my longtime friend Carolyn Rhodes, as she faced her first day at home following the death of her adult son, Casey. The retirement she knew now became a line-drive fast ball piercing her heart.
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Looking back, Carolyn discovered a fast-paced momentum during retirement after raising Casey as a single parent. Her husband died when their son was 11. Carolyn then moved the little family from New York City to Connecticut, eventually settling in Tuscaloosa, Alabama. She never missed a beat in support of Casey and found Tuscaloosa a good place for both her employment and his schooling. The University of Alabama hired Carolyn in an administrative position and soon discovered her writing expertise would benefit the university. In retirement, the Culverhouse College of Business regularly rehired Carolyn to conduct interviews of successful graduates for the school’s alumni magazine.
Retirement not only provided time to pursue writing, but also to enjoy her love of dance and use her athletic ability. She joined a line dancing group and became an arthritis exercise class instructor through Osher Lifelong Learning at the University of Alabama.
Carolyn’s computer knowledge, however, flourished through her son, who was a techie wiz, an entrepreneur who owned his own business. Casey taught his mom everything she needed to know, advising her which computer and other devices to purchase, always looking for the best deals. Casey’s influence led to Carolyn creating a BY SUZANNE technical website where she posted tips for
G. BEYER her readers. Each year, Casey and Carolyn attended the Consumer Electronics Show (CES) in Las Vegas to keep apprised of the most recent advances in the world of tech. The venue provided a place for Carolyn to interview inventors and a place for Casey to pursue his photography. With Casey’s eye for a good photograph and Carolyn’s interviewing and writing skills, the two made a great pair for producing articles for their website and in magazines. Her nonfiction articles on many subjects, from map-making to museums, landed in several Alabama publications, and also earned her awards from her Christian writers’ group. Carolyn credits her unusual upbringing to one of her biggest accomplishments. Her memoir, Library Girls of New York was published in 2019. With Casey’s assistance in all things mechanical, like a jammed printer or crashed computer, Carolyn proceeded
with the creative writing part that today serves as a prime example of a writer’s mantra, “Show, don’t tell!”
Not to reveal too much of her book’s content, Carolyn and her two sisters were raised in two New York City public libraries. She gives thanks and credit to industrialist and philanthropist Andrew Carnegie for a life amid shelves of books.
She wrote, “From 1910 to the 1970s, the New York Public Library offered free apartments inside the library, to include salary for its custodian families.”
Besides books, Carolyn loved the library music room, especially after hours, where she fell in love with musical theater. A dancing passion emerged, her ultimate major in college. Along with her college dance troupe, she performed her own choreographed Renaissance and Medieval dance presentation at Lincoln Center.
I met Carolyn at Staten Island’s Curtis High School where we were both cheerleaders. After cheer practice we both walked to her apartment located inside the St. George Library close to school, said goodbye, and I continued a long commute home via city bus.
Carolyn and I have cheered each other on ever ever since, but how to comfort my dear friend now, the day the music died, the creative writing stopped, her world with her cherished son vanished in a split second.
The silence is deafening without Casey, the guy who often said during his mom’s retirement, “Mom, you don’t have to work so hard.” For Carolyn, it was never work but using and enjoying every second of retirement to pursue her many interests.
Casey left this physical world two days before Christmas 2021, with angels guiding him on a heavenly journey. God holds Carolyn’s hand and wraps her broken pieces in His arms until she’s able to stand tall, and to write and dance once again.
If you are interested in purchasing a copy of Carolyn Rhodes' book, Library Girls of New York, you may email her at writegems@gmail.com.
Suzanne G. Beyer of Bothell writes nonfiction articles for national publications. Seattle's Northwest Prime Time has featured several of her pieces. She also co-authored a family saga in her book, The Inventors Fortune Up for Grabs.
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My own origin story goes like this: I was born just before a snowstorm, a rare event in Seattle, even in January. When we left the hospital, we went to my grandparents’ house, instead of to my parents’ apartment, which was several miles further away. When it came time to go to bed, my mother held me and murmured lullabies all night long, so as not to let my crying wake her husband, her in-laws, or my older brother and sister. The way she told the story is that for the rest of my babyhood, I wanted to be held all night. How could I not? Who would want to leave the soft, warm arms of her mother, the sweet sounds of her lullaby?
A few years ago, my father told me his version of the story. Yes, there was a snowstorm, and yes, we stopped at my grandparents’ home to pick up my older brother and sister. Pictures were taken outside their snow-covered brick house of newborn me all wrapped up against the cold. But it was not until I was about six months old— summertime—that we lived there for a few months, while my parents searched for a house of their own. He can’t remember whether Mom held me all night or not, because he was asleep.
I want to believe my version, because there’s so much comfort in it. I want to believe that on my second or third day of life, I was carried through the snow to the safety of my grandparents’ guest bedroom and held all night by my mother while she sang, “Rock-ABye Baby,” locking her eyes with mine until mine closed, holding me close until I sank into the featherbed of sleep. I must have created this version from those snowy photos I’d seen. And then mixed it with her story of having to keep me quiet all night, and then mixed it again, later, with the bliss I felt when I sang my own babies to sleep.
“Lullabies are the first love songs we hear,” says photojournalist Hannah Reyes Morales, who has traveled the world taking photos and recording sound of mothers singing to their babies. Along with love, lullabies embody hope. “They seem to hold the promise that on the other side awaits a bright morning.”
Morales was a presenter, via video, at the Frye Museum’s December 2021 Creative Aging conference. The theme of this virtual gathering of artists, scientists, caregivers, and writers was “Cultivating Compassion.” Being held and rocked and sung to is our first experience, as humans, of pure compassion. We cry. Our mother
or father, grandparent or caregiver responds by holding us and soothing us with a song. And we soothe them, too, by melting into sleep. As if to say, “Thank you. You see? I’m okay now. I’m going to sleep, which means you’ll get to rest, too.” Morales’ presentation, based on her National Geographic photo essay “Songs to Soothe,” included audio of what is believed to be the oldest known lullaby: a Babylonian song, at least 4,000 years old, inscribed on a clay tablet. “Little baby in the dark house, you have seen the sun rise,” it begins. “Why are you crying? Why are you screaming? You have disturbed the house god.” Cultivating
A nurse sings a lullaby to her child via Facetime.
The idea of lullabies as a root source of compassion— a deep well we can go back to, at any time in our lives, when we want or need to cultivate compassion— is powerful.
Compassion
BY ANN HEDREEN
PHOTOGRAPHY BY HANNAH REYES MORALES
It might seem counterintuitive for a Creative Aging conference to include a presentation on lullabies. But the idea of lullabies as a root source of compassion—a deep well we can go back to, at any time in our lives, when we want or need to cultivate compassion—is powerful. Especially when you think of it all in the context of recent research on neuroplasticity, our brain’s ability to change and develop not just during childhood, but over the entire span of our lives.
“Neuroplasticity is possible throughout life,” explained neurosurgeon James Doty, the keynote speaker at the conference, in an interview with UW Associate Professor of Neurology Kristoffer Rhoads. “Being of service changes you at any age. People say, ‘I don’t have power.’ But you can influence other people every day by being compassionate.” Doty is the founder and director of the Stanford Center for Compassion and Altruism Research and Education (CCARE) and author of Into the Magic Shop: A Neurosurgeon’s Quest to Discover the Mysteries of the Brain and the Secrets of the Heart, a memoir charting his own journey from poverty and neglect to medical school and a career as a brain surgeon. It’s a journey he is convinced he could not have made without the brief presence in his life of an older woman he met by chance at a magic shop, who taught him not magic tricks but mindfulness meditation, which became the lifeboat that got him through the turbulent waters of a chaotic adolescence. Later, he realized that for him, meditation was also the first step toward cultivating compassion: “Being present and being connected with others is the most powerful thing we have.”
Rhoads, who has been offering weekly mindful meditation sessions at the Frye Museum (and on YouTube during the pandemic) for four years, concurs. “Kindness and compassion for self and others are such critical components to help maintain one’s ability to persist,” especially during stressful times, Rhoads said in a follow-up conversation. Meditation offers us a way to “shore up the foundation of resilience and our ability to stay engaged and stay connected and not shut down and become cold or hardened.” And “there is plenty of data that would suggest that as we engage in compassion or meditation practices, we’re activating different parts of our nervous system. To quiet down that ‘fight or flight.’”
Rhoads is adamant that anyone, at any age, can start a meditation practice, which is, he emphasized, “not a mastery
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—National Geographic Magazine, December 2020
event. I’ve been doing this for 37 years, and I’m not good at it! That’s not the point. It’s a practice.”
Compassion asks much of us during a time like this. “The pandemic has shown us we are not in control,” said Doty. “It’s made us understand the importance of relationships. It’s also made a lot of people very unhappy and lonely (because) it has interfered with our ability to connect.” And yet, as Doty pointed out, not only are we seeing stories of “extraordinary acts done by average people,” we’re seeing a narrative thread of compassion that is influencing our culture, including what we choose to watch, such as the wildly popular Ted Lasso series, featuring a main character who wants to be kind and help people.
When Doty was asked by a caregiver in the virtual audience whether boundaries can be a form of compassion, he was quick to say yes, that without self-care, without boundaries, you cannot give your patients or clients the full measure of your compassion. Especially in a time defined by a pandemic.
In Morales’ photo essay, we saw COVID ICU nurses singing lullabies, via Facetime, to their children. In 2020, boundaries had suddenly become literal and critical to their babies’ health. But that first, primal form of compassion—a lullaby—was still possible. Even across the barrier of a screen, the nurses could comfort their babies, and themselves.
What an example for us all of cultivating compassion in the most difficult of times.
You can hear recordings of the lullabies at www.livinglullabies.net
Ann Hedreen is an author (Her Beautiful Brain), teacher of memoir writing, and filmmaker, she recently completed a second memoir, After Ecstasy: Memoir of an Observant Doubter.
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For Love of Earth
BY DAVID KORTEN
These are not happy times. We have entered the third year of what science tells us will be humanity’s decisive decade. Unless we navigate a global course change before 2030, we risk doing such irreversible damage to Earth’s regenerative systems that our species is unlikely to survive. Record heat, storms, floods, droughts, fires, and the COVID pandemic affirm the danger is real and immediate.
I’m often struck in conversations with friends and colleagues by the number who feel that humans may not have a future. They find comfort, however, in their belief that Earth will ultimately recover. This suggests that the depth of our love for Earth exceeds our concern for ourselves and our own species. Perhaps we are coming to consider our anticipated human fate to be a fitting punishment for the sins that we, in our anthropocentric arrogance, have committed against one another and the Earth that birthed and nurtures us. Humans have become like an invasive species. In Defiant Earth: The Fate of Humans in the Anthropocene, Clive Hamilton notes that as humans have become like an invasive species, Earth has begun to respond as living organisms do. Reject the invader.
He goes on to suggest that humans may be disrupting Earth’s living systems beyond their capacity for selfhealing. More startling—but equally plausible—is Hamilton’s suggestion that Earth’s survival as a living organism may depend on humans transitioning from our role as Earth exploiters to a role as facilitators of Earth healing.
Herein lies a potentially gamechanging insight. Earth has recovered before from extreme shocks and mass extinctions, but there is no guarantee it can do so again. Earth may now need us as much as we need Earth.
Earth is breathtakingly special. Among the now estimated 2 trillion galaxies in the universe, scientists have yet to identify another planet with the water, soils, atmosphere, and climate required to sustain complex life. Earth may be a unique miracle in the vastness of creation. Our actions represent a breach of cosmic proportion. I find it impossible to acknowledge Earth’s distinctive beauty and wonder without being overwhelmed by unbearable grief and despair at what humans—in our anthropocentric arrogance—have done to this cosmic miracle. Our actions represent a breach of responsibility to creation and to Earth of cosmic proportion.
As individuals, most humans regularly demonstrate an extraordinary capacity for love and caring—sometimes to the extent of sacrificing our own lives for others. This, for me, shows the positive potential of our nature. As societies, however, we have demonstrated an extraordinary capacity for violence and mutual oppression at the expense of ourselves and Earth.
It appears our nature is defined by neither love nor violence, but rather by our ability to choose between sharply contrasting and deeply conflicting paths. We exercise that choice both as individuals and, through our culture and institutions, as a global species.
Disgusted by our long history of violence and abuse against one another and Earth, we humans seem ready to abandon hope for ourselves. But what about our hopes for Earth? Might our love for the planet hold the key both to its salvation and to ours? Might we, by willful choice, transition from Earth exploiters to Earth healers? If we recognize Earth’s uniqueness, its need for our help, and our responsibility to respond, might we, as a now intimately interconnected global species, unite in a common cause? Might we muster sufficient commitment to serve as loving healers to two of creation’s most extraordinary miracles—a living planet of spectacular beauty, and a species with a unique capacity for creative conscious choice? An ancient truth now confirmed by science. I’ve been privileged over my 84 years to engage in global conversations about human possibility with some of the world’s most extraordinary minds— conversations that transcend the varied identities that have so long divided us. Recently, these conversations have become an experience in rapid learning, creativity, and commitment beyond anything I’ve previously experienced.
Shortly before the COVID pandemic, I visited South Africa with Fran, my wife and life partner. We were guests of Mamphela Ramphele, a leader of South Africa’s anti-apartheid movement. She spoke of the ancient African concept of ubuntu, which translates to “I am because you/we are.” It is a foundational truth, recently affirmed by science and elaborated as follows:
Life is a fundamentally cooperative enterprise that depends on diverse communities of living beings selforganizing to create and maintain the
Start an Ecological Civilization Discussion Group
Who would you like to invite for a conversation about healing the planet and making the world a better place, for everyone, everywhere? David Korten’s Ecological Civilization white paper can be freely downloaded and shared as a basis for discussion. Link to it at https://www.clubofrome.org/blog-post/korten-eco-civilisation/ Here are some suggested discussion questions to share with your group or book club:
• What is your vision of a world that works for everyone, everywhere? • How did we get to this time of multiple global crises? How do we change course to heal our relationships with Earth and each other to support well-being for all? • Where does the power reside to make the kinds of major changes we need? • As an elder, how do the crises we face affect you and those around you? What life skills, knowledge, wisdom, experience, and/or resources can you contribute to help advance the movement toward an ecological civilization? • Choosing a path to a future of well-being for everyone and our living Earth is no small, short-term task. Everyone everywhere will need to pitch in, with elders taking a special role. Starting now, what special skills and resources can you offer, and how will you influence and participate in making the necessary changes to help pave the way for the next generations? • What would it look like to be a truly interdependent species? • What would an ecological civilization look like? conditions essential to their individual and mutual existence.
Humans are distinctive among Earth’s many species in our ability, through our conscious choices, to shape Earth’s future, and thereby our own. It is a powerful gift. But when we get our choices wrong, we become an existential threat to that which should be the objects of our care.
We have our current choices badly wrong because of a misguided love affair with money and the institutions that control our access to it. As a society we have allowed a love of money to trump our love of Earth. Valuing Earth only for its market price, we yielded ever more power to the institutions of business to control the institutions of government based on a promise that we would receive ever growing material affluence in return.
The enormous tragedy and suffering caused by the disruptions of the climate emergency and the COVID pandemic have been brutal reminders of our love for and responsibility to the living Earth and one another. We have begun to recognize and confront the full implications.
It is my hope that this recognition creates an epic opportunity. Our step to an ecological civilization. The theme of the Spring 2021 issue of YES! magazine was, “Toward an Ecological Civilization.” YES! Executive Editor Zenobia Jeffries Warfield framed the online edition with this simple and unsettling truth:
“The path toward an ecological civilization moves us from an uncivilized society based on selfish wealth accumulation to one that is communityoriented and life affirming.”
This truth is an essential part of letting go of institutions and policies devoted to growing the fortunes of billionaires in disregard of such consequences as growing millions of homeless refugees and the destruction of Earth’s capacity to sustain life.
We face a clear choice with daunting implications. Which do we love more, money or life?
To move from the money-serving world we have created to the ecological civilization on which our future depends, we must imagine, and then create together, the future we want.
The basics are obvious. Such a civilization must support peaceful sharing, environmental health, and a secure and meaningful means of living for all people. The details of getting to these outcomes are breathtakingly complex.
There are many among us with essential insights. The YES! issue is one effort to pull together such insights into a coherent frame. Another is a 2021 white paper, “Ecological Civilization: From Emergency to Emergence” that I wrote for the Club of Rome.
As we work our way through this pandemic, there must be no return to business as usual. Hope lies in letting go of our deeply troubled past as we embrace the opportunity now at hand to build back better. This is our opportunity to let go of our ruthless competition for money and embrace our responsibilities as living beings devoted to loving care for life.
These are illustrative features of that future: • War will be confined to history books. • Power will be shared within and among deeply democratic, bio-regionally selfreliant local communities. • Government and business will be accountable to the people they serve. • Material needs will be met by local circular supply chains. • Education will prioritize development of learning skills to prepare us to adapt and contribute to an everevolving world. • Most meetings will be electronic. • Tools, appliances, and devices will be designed for easy repair and recycling. • All children will be wanted by a family, and a village dedicated to their care and full development. • Cities will be designed to meet needs for personal transport by walking, cycling, and electrified public transit.
These features will increase human well-being while supporting the recovery of Earth’s regenerative systems. We need sacrifice only that which is uncivilized and dehumanizing. As a species we will have less money and more life.
Engaging countless millions of people in deep conversations and local experiments leading to an ever more compelling, coherent, and actionable vision of our collective future is a defining challenge for 2022. We each have our role in meeting this challenge—especially those of us in our Third Act years. We each bring the skills, experience, and wisdom of a lifetime. Many of us also have the discretionary time and income afforded by retirement. This gives us the freedom, as elders of the human tribe, to apply these assets in our final years as a gift in support of the youngsters who must lead in creating what will follow.
I cannot know the specifics of your distinctive contribution. What I do know is that if enough of us get together behind a shared vision of a living world of love, we have the potential to create that world together.
David Korten is co-founder of YES! magazine, president of the Living Economies Forum, a member of the Club of Rome, and the author of influential books, including When Corporations Rule the World, The Great Turning: From Empire to Earth Community, and Change the Story, Change the Future: A Living Economy for a Living Earth. His work builds on lessons from the 21 years he and his wife, Fran, lived and worked abroad on a quest to end global poverty. This is an expanded and updated version of an article by the same name previously published in YES!
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