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