Guest Post

Chip’s note: Massey offered such a joyous, curious energy during his Sabbatical Session stay at MEA. While this guest post doesn’t necessarily fit the normal Wisdom Well topics, it does offer a window into why we keep seeing names like GameStop and Dogecoin in the news. If you want to understand how the “king of memes,” Elon Musk uses this communication tool to his advantage, read on.

Over the last five years, I've been on an intergenerational journey with my now 80-year-old mom for our documentary, DUTY FREE. To say our time together has been life-changing would be cutting the experience short. I've been able to ask my mom every question I've ever wanted to ask, I've cried with her, laughed with her, learned from her, and fought for her.

How Lessons From Our Furry Friends Can Ease and Enliven Our Transition to Elderhood When we’re young, we never think it will happen to us. Sure, on some level, we know it’s inevitable, but it’s too far away to be real. And then, it happens! We realize that yes, somehow, someway, we have ascended the crest of the proverbial midlife hill and are transitioning to being seniors! When my wife Amy turned sixty, this realization hit us (I will join her in a few months) smack in the face like a well-timed pie! (We’re still licking off the coconut cream!)

MEA alum Rob Hanna and I recently rifted on “manopause,” the physical and psychological symptoms that often affect men in their 50s and are part of the natural aging process. It is estimated that testosterone decreases about 10% every decade after men reach the age of 30.

During the next two days, we will explore certain ways that women and men experience their bodies aging in midlife. Ironically, both of the MEA alums being interviewed were in the same beta Baja cohort in April 2018. MEA co-founder Christine Sperber interviews Jeanne Chung in today’s post.

When Dan Steffey, 78, recently went to his boss, Eric Paine, 41, to say that he wanted to retire, Paine didn’t hesitate to politely decline his request. Five years earlier, Paine, CEO of rapidly-growing Community Development Partners (CDP), a mission-driven affordable housing development organization, had hired Steffey, a grizzled veteran of affordable housing in Oregon, to help them expand into the Pacific Northwest.

As the world opens up, many of you may begin to notice a strange phenomenon. I am starting to call it the “phantom IRL” effect. It goes something like this: After 14 months of lockdown you finally get to meet someone in person you haven’t seen in a really long time, or someone that you have only known through zoom or some other type of video-based communications.

In our work at the Academy, there is a lot of big magic. From the moment you walk in, the big magic of the place, Baja, envelops you. The oceanfront home, the empty sand beach feels like an LA lifestyle that is just beyond the means of normal people. Then, whales start breaching, huge eagles fly by, big ideas are shared and you are left thinking 'this shit is crazy.'

I grew up on a big wheat and soybean farm in Kansas. It’s a place so rural, the nearest fast food and movie theater is almost an hour away. It was quiet in a way that you could hear the rustling and songs of meadowlarks and quail, and the coyotes at night. You could hear the constant wind rushing through the tall grass. You could hear your own thoughts.

I was in ‘the valley’ of purpose paralysis. I had been soul searching for 721 days after leaving my big corporate career. I felt flatlined from soul searching and identity shedding, wondering what my next move should be. I thought the C-Suite was my promised land until my corporate ego finally bowed down, and I sent a cold-call email pitch to Chip to be an MEA ‘intern.’