I know this is a loaded question, but here's what the statistics tell us: 80% of people over 40 say they feel younger than their chronological age while fewer than 10% say they feel older. Is this because we want to be hopeful in our "cult of youth" society?

In the spring, I wrote about the "hermit-age," and this topic continues to be resonant for me, maybe because MEA might buy a former Catholic retreat center and chapel next to a Carmelite monastery in Santa Fe. Or perhaps because I recently visited Father Richard Rohr’s Center for Action and Contemplation hermitage south of Albuquerque.

The Encore Physicians program matches retired doctors who want to continue practicing medicine part-time with community health centers in the San Francisco Bay Area. These "modern elders" are paid for providing direct patient care and mentoring less experienced clinicians for a few days per week over the course of a year.

My friends and co-workers know I’m a little obsessive when it comes to being responsive to emails. When I was at Airbnb, I found that some (often younger) fellow employees might take a few days (or weeks) to respond to an email when they could have just jotted a simple one-sentence "I'll get back to you by Friday" to manage expectations.

No matter how enlightened we want to be, grudges happen and can rob you of precious time with life’s best gift … love. I learned that lesson when I reconnected with my old best friend at a hotel lobby in New York after not speaking to her for almost ten years.

The name of today’s post mirrors Anthea Pretorius’ poetry book that was published last year. She says, "Sometimes these short poems can be very thought provoking. I often say that a haiku is an unfinished poem. I start the story and tell only a fragment and the reader completes the story in their imaginations."

Dying a good death. It’s not a subject most of us choose to ponder. But, when you’re a medical doctor and face later-stage brain cancer, you recognize that you may not be there for your kids’ graduations or weddings.

at·​a·​rax·​ia (n.): "A Greek term for a state of being that most modern elders aspire to, in which one is imperturbable, full of lucid equanimity and feeling free; tranquility or untroubled mind.”

In Malcolm Gladwell’s best-selling and widely discussed book, Outliers: The Story of Success he talked about the 10,000 hours rule. In the book he cites a paper from American Scientist, by Herbert Simon and William Chase, noting that it takes between 10,000 and 50,000 hours to master something difficult.

Being a midwife must be a glorious and strenuous calling, helping birthing mothers bring a precious, new life into the world. In conversations with my friend Richard Rohr, he told me that midlife is almost like our second birth, the time when an adult’s operating system shifts from the ego to the soul. Here’s an excerpt from something he recently wrote: