This month sixty years ago, Gloria Steinem moved to New York to pursue her fledgling journalism career and, a dozen years later at age 38, started the pioneering Ms magazine. Given how influential she was in co-creating the modern women’s movement, the 85-year-old Steinem has some words of wisdom to offer those of us who are in the early stages of creating a “Modern Elder” movement.

In honor of the 25th anniversary of Martin Luther King, Jr. Day in the United States, I offer you this beautiful Washington Post article on the value of giving to others. This particular passage tugged at my heart, “We crave wealth, overspend and end up broke. We desire attention but end up alone. We sprint toward what we want and away from what we need.” Highly recommend you read it on this national holiday. How can you draw joy from helping others?

I am not afraid to die, I just don’t want to be there when it happens. – Woody Allen The widely promoted notion that we Americans are living progressively longer, healthier lives is inaccurate.

Nearly 2,500 years ago, Aristotle suggested that a good story must have a beginning, a middle, and an end. The 3-act play (or life) has existed ever since. Five hundred years ago, scientists started studying the epic 3-part metamorphosis of the caterpillar-cocoon-butterfly journey.

While I’d love to know the answer to that question, the more relevant question is, “Who are the three wisest people in your world?” A growing number of companies are starting to track and cultivate wisdom by asking the following question on their employee work climate surveys:

From my perspective, mentorship is defined by who is asking the questions, which can be categorized into one of two roles:

What if our primary operating system for life is meant to change in midlife and beyond? Psychologist Carl Jung suggested, “The first half of life is devoted to forming a healthy ego; the second half is going inward and letting go of it.”

Life is b-u-s-y. And that doesn’t change just because we become Middlescents—that stage of life when we question who we want to be when we are grown-ups—even though we are supposed to be all grown up!

First things first: I was weird. Chip was an all-star. Generous, handsome, smart and ready to open the door for anyone who needed a hand. Second: The real leap in Chip’s search for Wisdom that day at Stanford was going first. Not waiting to be picked, but becoming the picker.

Adolescence, as we know it, didn’t exist as a word until psychologist G. Stanley Hall coined the term for a book he wrote in 1904. Today, we recognize adolescence as that time when we experience a major transition (puberty) in who we are and how we see the world.