Lifes third act Jane Fonda

there have been many revolutions over

the last century but perhaps none as

significant as the longevity revolution

we are living on average today 34 years

longer than our great-grandparents did

think about that that’s an entire second

adult lifetime that’s been added to our

lifespan and yet for the most part our

culture has not come to terms with what

this means we’re still living with the

old paradigm of age as an arch that’s

the metaphor the old metaphor you’re

born you peak at midlife and decline

into decrepitude age as pathology but

many people today philosophers artists

doctors scientists are taking a new look

at what I call the third act the last

three decades of life they realize that

this is actually a developmental stage

of life with its own significance as

different from midlife as adolescences

from childhood and they are asking we we

should all be asking how do we use this

time how do we live it successfully what

is the appropriate new metaphor for

ageing I’ve spent the last year

researching and writing about this

subject and I have come to find that a

more appropriate metaphor for aging is a

staircase the upward ascension of the

human spirit bringing us into wisdom

wholeness and authenticity aged not at

all as pathology age as potential and

guess what this potential is not for the

lucky few it turns out most people over

50 feel better are less stressed less

hostile less anxious we tend to see

commonalities more than differences some

of the studies even say we’re happier

this is not what I expected trust me I

come from a long line of depressives as

I was approaching my late 40s when I

would wake up in the

my first six thoughts would all be

negative and I got scared I thought oh

my gosh I’m gonna become a crotchety old

lady but now that I am actually smack

dab in the middle of my own third act I

realize I’ve never been happier I have

such a powerful feeling of well-being

and I’ve discovered that when you’re

inside old earnest as opposed to looking

at it from the outside fear subsides you

realize you’re still yourself maybe even

more so

you know Picasso once said it takes a

long time to become young I don’t want

to romanticize ageing obviously there’s

no guarantee that it can be a time of

fruition and growth some of it is a

matter of luck some of it obviously is

genetic one-third of it in fact is

genetic and there isn’t much we can do

about that but that means that

two-thirds of how well we do in the

third act we can do something about

we’re going to discuss what we can do to

make these added years really successful

and use them to make a difference now

let me say something about the staircase

which may seem like an odd metaphor for

seniors given the fact that many seniors

are challenged by stairs myself included

as you may know the entire world

operates on a universal law entropy the

second law of thermodynamics entropy

means that everything in the world

everything is in a state of decline and

decay the arch there’s only one

exception to this universal law and that

is the human spirit which can continue

to evolve upwards the staircase bringing

us into wholeness authenticity and

wisdom and here’s an example of what I

mean

this this upward ascension can happen

even in the face of extreme physical

challenges about three years ago I read

an article in The New York Times

was about a man named Neil Salinger 57

years old a retired lawyer who had

joined the writers group at Sarah

Lawrence where he found his writers

voice two years later he was diagnosed

with ALS commonly known as Lou Gehrig’s

disease it’s a terrible disease its

fatal it wastes the body but the mind

remains intact in this article mr.

Salinger wrote the following to describe

what was happening to him and I quote as

my muscles weakened my writing became

stronger as I slowly lost my speech I

gained my voice as I diminished I grew

as I lost so much I finally started to

find myself

Neil Salinger to me is the embodiment of

mounting the staircase in his third act

now we’re all born with spirit all of us

but sometimes it get stamped down

beneath the challenges of life violence

abuse neglect perhaps our parents

suffered from depression perhaps they

weren’t able to love us beyond how we

performed in the world perhaps we still

suffer from a psychic pain a wound

perhaps we feel that many of our

relationships have not had closure and

so we can feel unfinished perhaps the

task of the third act is to finish up

the task of finishing ourselves for me

it began as I was approaching my third

act my sixtieth birthday how was I

supposed to live it what was I supposed

to accomplish in this final act and I

realized that in order to know where I

was going I had to know where I’d been

and so I went back and I studied my

first two acts trying to see who I was

then who I really was not who my parents

or other people told me I was or treated

me like I was but who was I who

my parents not as parents but as people

who were my grandparents how did they

treat my parents these kinds of things I

discovered a couple of years later that

this process that I had gone through is

called by psychologists doing a life

review and they say it can give new

significance and clarity and meaning to

a person’s life you may discover as I

did that a lot of things that you used

to think were your fault a lot of things

that you used to think about yourself

really had nothing to do with you it

wasn’t your fault you’re just fine and

you’re able to go back and forgive them

and forgive yourself you’re able to free

yourself from your past you can work to

change your relationship to your past

now while I was writing about this I

came upon a book called man’s search for

meaning by Viktor Frankl Viktor Frankl

was a German psychiatrist who’d spent

five years in a Nazi concentration camp

and he wrote that while he was in the

camp he could tell should they ever be

released which of the people would be

okay and which would not and he wrote

this everything you have in life can be

taken from you except one thing your

freedom to choose how you will respond

to the situation this is what determines

the quality of the life we’ve lived not

whether we’ve been rich or poor famous

or unknown healthy or suffering what

determines our quality of life is how we

relate to these realities what kind of

meaning we assign them what kind of

attitude we cling to about them what

state of mind we allow them to trigger

perhaps the central purpose of the third

act is to go back and to try if

appropriate to change our relationship

to the past

it turns out that cognitive research

shows when we are able to do this it

manifests neurologically neural pathways

are created in the brain you see if you

have overtime reacted negatively to past

events in people neural pathways or laid

down by chemical and electrical signals

that are sent through the brain and over

time these neural pathways become

hardwired they become the norm even if

it’s bad for us because it causes us

stress and anxiety if however we can go

back and alter our relationship revision

our relationship to past people and

events neural pathways can change and if

we can maintain the more positive

feelings about the past that becomes the

new norm

it’s like resetting a thermostat you

know it’s it’s not having experiences

that make us wise it’s reflecting on the

experiences that we’ve had that makes us

wise and that helps us become whole

brings wisdom and authenticity it helps

us become what we might have been women

start off whole don’t we I mean as girls

we’re feisty yahoo says we have agency

we are the subjects of our own lives but

very often many if not most of us when

we hit puberty we start worrying about

fitting in and being popular and we we

become the subjects and objects of other

people’s lives but now in our third acts

it may be possible for us to circle back

to where we started and know it for the

first time and if we can do that it will

not just be for ourselves older women

are the largest demographic in the world

if we can go back and redefine ourselves

and become whole this will create a

cultural shift in the world and it will

give an example to younger generations

so that they can Rican sieve their

lifespan thank you very much

you