MEA

After completing an eight-week MEA online course on Navigating Midlife Transitions in November 2021, I was automatically eligible for MEA alumni membership.

Have you ever experienced something so powerful that it leaves you in awe?

When my co-founder Christine Sperber first told me that part of our workshop program would include having small pods of our compadres (what we call our workshop attendees) baking bread as a means of learning collaboration, I thought she was off her hippy-dippy rocker. But, as it turns out, it’s one of the beloved experiences of our 7-day workshops.

I see you. You’ve been loyally reading my daily blogs. You’ve joined us on calls with Esther Perel, Dan Buettner, and all kinds of MEA faculty members this winter. You’ve heard from a friend that MEA was a transformative experience and that it’s a good fit for you. You’ve checked out the MEA website, but you needed a reason to say, “Heck, I’m ready!”

“I think you have to grow up twice. The first time happens automatically. Everyone passes from childhood to adulthood, and this transition is marked as much by the moment when the weight of the world overshadows the wonder of the world as it is by the passage of years. Usually you don’t get to choose when it happens. But if this triumph of weight over wonder marks the first passage into adulthood, the second is a rediscovery of that wonder despite sickness, evil, fear, sadness, suffering—despite everything. And this second passage doesn’t just happen on its own. It’s a choice, not an inevitability. It’s something you have to deliberately go out to find, and value, and protect. And you can’t just do it once and keep it forever. You have to keep looking.” Nate Staniforth (magician)

The Tibetan bowl is a marvel. You ring it, and you instantly feel its vibration throughout your body.

“I don’t believe people are looking for the meaning of life as much as they are the experience of being alive.” -Joseph Campbell

Is Father Time the bully that sneaks up on you or the fairy that grants you wishes? Your answer to that question will determine how long you live, not to mention the quality of your life.

It’s been said, “Santa Fe may wear the mantle of great age, but because she welcomes the new and exciting, she never grows old.”

As I was soaking up the last minutes on MEA’s Baja campus just before writing The Pause (the poem I shared last month on Wisdom Well) waiting on my shuttle for the airport to arrive, I was taking in the beauty of my surroundings-soaking it all up.