Tag: time

Are You Ageist or Sagest?

Time is ticking for all of us. How do you spend your time each week? Answers from 125 individuals, ages 55-96, provide possibilities. I found both ageist and sagest responses, sometimes coming from the same individual, in my Johnston Retirement Survey for my book, Transforming Retirement: Rewire and Grow Your Legacy. Survey samples define retirement:

65, female (works 30 hours a week): “To withdraw—I don’t see any blessings in retirement.” 

68, male (retired 1 year): “Boredom.”

72, male (retired 5 years): “I hadn’t anticipated a divorce.”

73, female (works 18 hours/week; volunteers 15 hours/week): “For my parents/grandparents, [retirement] meant no longer working. It is difficult for me to envision retirement—it seems, as I think about this, that I equate it with poor health. I think I am in the process of letting go of self-limiting beliefs.”

73, male (retired 7 years; volunteers 10-20 hours/week): “Helping my children enjoy life…being an activist to change our world for the better.”

75, male (retired 3 years; volunteers 20 hours/week): Sometimes I feel isolated when I’m not doing volunteer work, or otherwise in social situations…retirement allows me to focus on developing as a real person…it allows me to pursue my real passions.”

80, female (semiretired 20 years; volunteers 15 hours/week): “Time to make and keep connections with important people and the larger earth…treasure each day and let go of regrets.”

93, female (retired 29 years; volunteering varies): “No more days to go away to work…it’s a special time to use as planned.” (She uses expert sewing skills to mend others’ clothing in her assisted-living residence.)

Yes, retirement has the possibility of special time. Our perception of “time” is ever present in aging. Yet, there is timelessness to stockpiling wisdom. For all who maintain their cognition, and embrace possibilities, wisdom consolidation is available 24/7. As M. Scott Peck, psychiatrist and author (The Road Less Traveled), sagely stated: “Until you value yourself, you won’t value your time. Until you value your time, you will not do anything with it.”                

Unfortunately, many associate aging with a narrowing, rather than a growing, self-definition. They find it difficult to value themselves, buying into our culture’s ageism. I recently heard a woman loudly proclaim, “I am old,” as if she expects others to cut her some slack for anything she does. Her investment in time appreciation seems limited. If seasoned citizens do not rewire and value their gift of life’s time, boredom can cut their interest-in-life rates. 

David Romanelli, author of Life Lessons from the Oldest & Wisest, found many among the sagest: “An elder’s wisdom is often raw, unscripted, unbranded, poignant, and deeply personal…if you ask an elder to share their story…spend some time…they will teach you something that you cannot learn from even the most successful self-help gurus.”  

Let’s urge everyone, regardless of age, to invest in possibilities. Transforming Retirement has numerous “Possibility Time” exercises.

Pearls of Peace (PoP) Quiz

530. Do you consider yourself more ageist or sagest?

531. What is on your possibility list? 

Pearls of Time

Time is both slipping by and an enduring treasure. Time has been on people’s minds, well, for a long time.

  • “Time is the most valuable thing a man [person] can spend.” — Theophrastus, Greek philosopher and naturalist (372 BC-287 BC)
  •  “People don’t take opportunities because the timing is bad, the financial side unsecure. Too many people are overanalyzing. Sometimes you just have to go for it.” —Michelle Zatlyn,  Cloudflare co-founder
  • “Time is what we want most but what we use worst.” — William Penn, British Quaker founder of Pennsylvania
  • “Every tragedy we can imagine comes back to just one: time slipping by.”
    — Simone Weil, French philosopher (1909-1943)
  • “Time management is an oxymoron. Time is beyond our control, and the clock keeps ticking regardless of how we lead our lives.” — John C. Maxwell, American writer on leadership
  • “Liminal moments. Those moments apart from time when you are gripped. Taken. When you are so fully absorbed in what you are doing that time ceases to exist.” ― Rebecca Wells, Divine Secrets of the Ya-Ya Sisterhood

And from my favorite timekeeper:

  • “…Doesn’t everything die at last, and too soon? Tell me, what is it you plan to do with your one wild and precious life? ― Mary Oliver, The Summer Day

Poetry cuts to the chase on most topics. Poets understand impermanence. They often embrace curiosity for one’s present time.

 Poet and naturalist Derek Sheffield became Washinton state’s 8th poet laureate on 04-30-25. Freelance writer Sarah Neilson summed up his poetry succinctly: Sheffield writes with wildness and wellness as inspiration. In Neilson’s interview for the Seattle Times, Sheffield reflected on his work with a philosophy I can endorse: “An important part of my own journey has been my sense of curiosity and my capacity to feel wonder. I will run across people who don’t seem to have that capacity and don’t seem to be curious…a fair amount of what I do in writing classes is unteaching and trying to get us back to where we all started in third grade. That space, that energy, that trust, that imagination, that engagement with our imagination.”

Yes, who were we in 3rd grade? How did that timeframe influence who we are today? Wasn’t it just yesterday? I recall loving my 3rd grade teacher, Mrs. Anderson. She encouraged creativity and was a font of positivity. I recall her constant smiles. Some teachers’ influence can last a lifetime, either in a good way or a less skillful way. We earthlings are interconnected in a circle of time’s memories.

Consider Derek Sheffield’s poem, Still Time:

“In a wide
and motionless circle, nine

Chinook salmon
below a stilled spillway,

nose to tail-fin, wait,
faint flutterings rounding their backs

in place, each moment
slipping (a white bubble

up from the dark) through the clock face
they make of creek water,

a count we might mistake
as ours.”

  Pearls of Peace (PoP) Quiz

407. How do you think about your slipping-by moments?

408. What are your plans for wildness and wellness today?