Guest Post

There’s a photo etched in my memory more vivid than any other from my childhood. I am 3 years old, grinning, leaning back over my highchair, craning to look at my mother who is sitting on my grandparents’ couch beside my father.

let me be your animal concealed in moonlight’s silver beams nude and chilled in errant spring

“Physical Distancing” If you’re working from home for the foreseeable future due to the ongoing pandemic, you’re most likely going to be getting a lot more comfortable with video conferencing. Just because we can’t go out doesn’t mean we need to feel isolated. Isolation is fatal.

Three weeks ago, I was enjoying my empty nest. I was traveling for weeks at a time – part pleasure, part work, never needing to check in on the home front. What a difference a week makes.

The idea came off the page Like a ship White and proud Slicing through lettered oceans Out and out to the heart of things.

Okay, I’ll admit it: I’m a bit of a change junkie. My shelves are packed with books that promise to help me banish bad habits, boost my creativity, and become a rock star at parenting.

Writing it down, whether it’s a quick observance of gratitude (I am grateful for… ) or the acknowledgement of pervasive fear (What if I die from COVID-19?), is one of the most important mental change agents in your toolkit. Especially in this anxious time.

At the center of our logo is a heart. A year into MEA we realized that empathy is the core of all our work. Empathy emerges when we recognize ourselves in others. When others are no longer others, when they become us, and become ours.

One of the collateral benefits of creating the Modern Elder Academy is the people we meet along the way. Poet Mark Nepo will be on our MEA master faculty next year and he sent me this just-penned piece of prose a couple of hours before we graduated our 50th cohort so I could share this exquisite piece of writing with them at their graduation ceremony this past Saturday evening. Proud to share “The Anthem of Our Day” with you as well.

This is a fitting title for this guest post from Sean as we officially closed the Modern Elder Academy for five weeks starting today as our 50th cohort said goodbye to our remote beachfront Baja campus.