Chip Conley

The other day, I was talking with my college friend Jeff, whose athletic spirit has always impressed me. He is pushing his mid-60s, telling me he’s about to embark upon the 250-mile John Muir Trail for an extended hiking and camping trip.

I saw this headline in the New York Times Ethicist column and was intrigued by how the “Dear Abby” of Ethics would answer this question. I’ve excerpted it below along with a question for you at the end.

One of the beauties of getting older is making sense of our experiences. Our painful lessons of the past become the raw material for our future wisdom. And not just our wisdom but the insight we pass on to those in our lives. After all, wisdom is not taught, it’s shared. So, how might you package up your metabolized experience and deliver it as distilled compassion to someone younger than you?

Long ago, Ralph Waldo Emerson said, “Who you are speaks so loudly, I can’t hear what you’re saying.” If you’re on the left, this might apply to Donald Trump. Or, on the right, Bernie Sanders. And, for Joe Biden, it might be, “Your age speaks so loudly, I can’t hear what you’re saying or see what you’re doing.”

David Brooks wrote a book, “The Second Mountain,” a few years ago that aptly defined some of the fundamental principles of our MEA program. He suggests that during the first half of our adult life, we often become fixated on personal goals based on family and cultural influences.

Mark Twain didn’t dabble in psychological focus groups, but he certainly knew something about human nature when he wrote, “Twenty years from now you will be more disappointed by the things that you didn’t do than by the ones you did do. So throw off the bowlines. Sail away from the safe harbor. Catch the trade winds in your sails. Explore. Dream. Discover.”

Is midlife a state of mind or a state of body? I’d say both. No doubt, it’s not an era with clear lines of demarcation like adolescence or retirement. So, all the more reason to create a quick quiz to figure out if you’re middle-aged. You get one point for each “yes” answer (please don’t take this too seriously; it’s meant to be fun and funny).

A recent New York Times story reminded me of this almost un-American concept, even though it's how most Americans experience Paris. Flâner is a verb meaning 'to stroll,' while a flâneur is a person of leisure who enjoys wandering the streets—soaking in the city and surroundings while appreciating its beauty.

In a past post, I talked about one of MEA’s wisdom practices of “Mentoring Stones.” The fine art of rock balancing has a lot in common with mentoring. Both require presence, patience, and an intuition for knowing when to step back and realize the rock or young person is ready to stand on their own.

The Dark Night of the Soul was popularized by a 16th-century mystic and Spanish poet who believed that a purification of the spirit comes from facing difficult challenges and surrendering to God’s wishes. In modern, secular times, it is often considered a time when one is going through a series of seemingly-impossible circumstances like the death of a loved one, the breakup of a marriage, or a painful failure.