Elder Wisdom (PDF)

Elder Wisdom invites us to a refreshing new vision of aging in the company of one hundred creative elders who share their insights and experiences about getting older. These mentors invite us to reflect on their lives so that we can reflect on our lives with pertinent questions about how we are eldering. They don't promise us an "ageless body" or a "timeless mind," but rather practical wisdom on how we can grow inwardly and reach out during later life in exciting and rewarding new ways.

Over a two-year period, Eugene Bianchi interviewed more than one hundred older people for this book. Their ages range from the midsixties to centenarians. They range from well-known people such as Jimmy Carter, Maggie Kuhn, E. G. Marshall, Tillie Olsen, Desmond Tutu, Martin Marty, and June Singer to an electrician, a teacher, a homemaker, an entrepreneur, an artist, and a bookstore owner. The selection is at once diverse and universal. The book's gift is its power to draw us into lives that are similar to our own, so that we can apply its elder wisdom to ourselves.

Topics covered include learning from work and life's turning points, empowering your elder self, expanding, reaching out, cherishing your family, cultivating friendships, encountering mortality, developing a personal spirituality, and sharing gifts of wisdom.

Elder Wisdom is not just for the still-active elder. It is a pathfinder that will help all of us move toward elderhood in creative and promising ways.