This week, I discussed aging in the unique and unsettling time of COVID-19 with my good friend, psychologist, gerontologist, Age Wave CEO, and best-selling author of 17 books, Ken Dychtwald, PhD.

Hermann Hesse wrote, “When we have learned how to listen to trees, then the brevity and the quickness and the childlike hastiness of our thoughts achieve an incomparable joy.” “Hay un árbol que adoro.” I flirt with this specific tree on my daily walk as it towers above a farm just five minutes from the MEA campus.

The title of this post is a mindset. It’s also the truth for many of us in midlife and beyond. According to the National Sleep Foundation, “Along with the physical changes that occur as we get older, changes to our sleep patterns are part of the normal aging process.

Early in April, I wrote a post on what the world would be like if we all retired at the same time. Of course, that ain’t gonna happen, but an increasing number of my peers tell me they’re ready for their pitstop or gap year.

Brain fog. Cog fog. Call it what you want. I’ve got it. At least for the last few weeks. Entrepreneurs often say they eat their own dog food. At MEA, Christine, Jeff, and I have binged on our growth mindset food. And, maybe that has led me to my recent bout with “cog fog.”

Long before ICE T popularized the “Original Gangster,” the world was blessed with another OG: Old-Growth forests. MEA alum Douglas Tsoi sent me this bumper sticker from Portland, heralding the verdant green regions that populate his state.

I’m thinking about the Law of Conservation of Energy today. This law, first proposed and tested by Émilie du Châtelet, means that energy can neither be created nor destroyed; rather, it can only be transformed or transferred from one form to another. I wonder if that applies to aging.

Chip: We’re going off-script today with a Q&A with one of the most fascinating documentary filmmakers in the world. Yes, he’s written books but the visual feast of his films is what we’re going to discuss today.

We each play many roles – employee, parent, manager, partner, colleague, volunteer, and others. We often play multiple roles throughout any given day, and during this pandemic, in which our work, relationships and home life fuse chaotically together, we may play various roles within the same minute.

Time and turbulence are natural teachers. Church-going folk are now drawn to their preachers. Nature is my balm for sublime uncertainty. The ocean, my habitat for divine convergency.