Author Bill Bishop has suggested, “It used to be that people were born as part of a community, and had to find their place as individuals. Now people are born as individuals, and have to find their community.”

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.

I write books to make sense of my life. Ten years ago, when I was going through my most challenging era, I realized I wasn’t very fluent in my emotions. In the hospital, after having gone flatline that day, I was reading Viktor Frankl’s landmark book, “Man’s Search for Meaning,” which was conveniently with me on this trip (I’d gone flatline on stage after giving a speech in St. Louis).

Is it true that as we age, we develop a smarter heart and a more passionate brain? There is growing social science research that suggests our EQ may increase with age and lead to higher levels of subjective well-being in midlife and later. Science aside, I couldn’t agree more.

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.

Aretha Franklin’s 1985 hit song, Who’s Zoomin’ Who, defines our new normal. In an era when worldwide stock markets are in freefall, the price of Zoom Video Communications has nearly doubled in the past five months. Worth just $1 billion as a private company three years ago, it’s now worth $30 billion.

Nowadays, you hear stories of Italians singing from their apartments to deserted streets, or kids writing lists about how their parents can be kinder to each other. This makes me hopeful, and wonder if it’s possible that this global timeout could create an opportunity for a global reset?

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.

Could our mundane lives be compared to the heroic caterpillar-to-butterfly-journey? What if, after childhood, we imagined—as many sociologists now do—the stage of life from age 15-25 as an “Emerging Adult”?