Old Age Is Not For Sissies

A witty look at aging.

A ninety-six-year-old man, on admission to a nursing home, was interviewed by a social worker. She asked, "Did you have a happy childhood?" With a twinkle in his eye, he replied: "So far, so good!" One of the undeniable facts of life is that we are all aging. Many people dread growing old. It was Bette Davis who said, "Old age ain't no place for sissies!" And yet Dr. Cook believes that what really matters as we age is not the condition of the body, but that of the spirit. We can find meaning and purpose no matter what our age. Growing Old Isn't for Sissies focuses on the physical, emotional, mental, and spiritual challenges we encounter as we age, primarily after age sixty-five, and what our Christian faith has to say to those challenges and changes. Our faith in God can help us in our journey through life, no matter what our age. This book will help those who are growing older to understand some of the changes and problems associated with growing older, whether you are twenty, forty, sixty or eighty. It will help you understand the spiritual resources that are important in coping with growing older.

This sequel to the best-selling Growing Old is Not For Sissies teaches us to reevaluate the popular associations of age with increasing malaise and infirmity. Instead, it presents 100 vital, compelling portraits of senior athletes accompanied by personal statements and poems on aging. Growing Old is Not for Sissies II is testament to the joy of physical activity and of living to a ripe old age. Fourth printing. By Etta Clark.

At this critical junction in the history of humankind, leaders that are proficient in magical thinking aren’t going to solve our problems. Creating alternative realities is not the answer. We need a very different kind of leadership—leaders who can resist the calls of regression and whose outlook is firmly based in reality. We need leaders who analyze and draw conclusions from, or use their own experiences as a development tool, face their strengths and weaknesses, and critique their own experiences in order to build new understandings. In this very personal and entertaining book, Manfred Kets de Vries, one of the “gurus” in the field of leadership studies offers his thoughts on leadership and life, reflections written for executives and the people who deal with them. As a psychoanalyst and leadership professor let loose in the world of renowned global organizations—as a passionate educator and scholar, or just a human being at the receiving end of heart-rending emails—he examines the pitfalls of leadership and the challenges for the professionals who work with senior executives in today’s AI-focused world. He points out why leaders can derail, and what steps they can take to prevent this from happening. Ultimately, this book encourages you to “Know yourself,” but makes no bones about the challenge it represents. Understanding our “inner theatre” will always be an uphill struggle. Kets de Vries points out why deep dives into our inner world are always fraught with many anxieties. Included in the many subjects covered by the author are the loneliness of command, the management of disappointment, the destructive role of greed, the impact of stubbornness, the role of storytelling, the importance of wellness, and the role of corporate culture. In addition, the book addresses the important topic of how to create great teams and best places to work. Furthermore, the book touches on endings– the ending of our career and the growing realization of the inevitable ending of our life. As time grows short, Kets de Vries emphasizes that we have no time to lose in dealing with our anxieties, regrets, and the things we spend much of our life determined not to see. Taking a deep dive into self-knowledge requires courage and support, and he is here to guide you through it.

A finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award, this memoir of one woman's later in life career change is “a smart, funny and compelling case for going after your heart's desires, no matter your age” (Essence). Following her retirement from Princeton University, celebrated historian Dr. Nell Irvin Painter surprised everyone in her life by returning to school––in her sixties––to earn a BFA and MFA in painting. In Old in Art School, she travels from her beloved Newark to the prestigious Rhode Island School of Design; finds meaning in the artists she loves, even as she comes to understand how they may be undervalued; and struggles with the unstable balance between the pursuit of art and the inevitable, sometimes painful demands of a life fully lived. How are women and artists seen and judged by their age, looks, and race? What does it mean when someone says, “You will never be an artist”? Who defines what an artist is and all that goes with such an identity, and how are these ideas tied to our shared conceptions of beauty, value, and difference? Bringing to bear incisive insights from two careers, Painter weaves a frank, funny, and often surprising tale of her move from academia to art in this "glorious achievement––bighearted and critical, insightful and entertaining. This book is a cup of courage for everyone who wants to change their lives" (Tayari Jones, author of An American Marriage).

#1 New York Times Bestseller 2014 NATIONAL BOOK AWARD FINALIST In her first memoir, New Yorker cartoonist Roz Chast brings her signature wit to the topic of aging parents. Spanning the last several years of their lives and told through four-color cartoons, family photos, and documents, and a narrative as rife with laughs as it is with tears, Chast's memoir is both comfort and comic relief for anyone experiencing the life-altering loss of elderly parents. When it came to her elderly mother and father, Roz held to the practices of denial, avoidance, and distraction. But when Elizabeth Chast climbed a ladder to locate an old souvenir from the “crazy closet”-with predictable results-the tools that had served Roz well through her parents' seventies, eighties, and into their early nineties could no longer be deployed. While the particulars are Chast-ian in their idiosyncrasies-an anxious father who had relied heavily on his wife for stability as he slipped into dementia and a former assistant principal mother whose overbearing personality had sidelined Roz for decades-the themes are universal: adult children accepting a parental role; aging and unstable parents leaving a family home for an institution; dealing with uncomfortable physical intimacies; managing logistics; and hiring strangers to provide the most personal care. An amazing portrait of two lives at their end and an only child coping as best she can, Can't We Talk about Something More Pleasant will show the full range of Roz Chast's talent as cartoonist and storyteller.

Ageing is about losing youth and finding a varicose vein. It is about fighting your children and making peace with your parents. It is about gaining wisdom and mislaying your reading glasses. Throughout time, people have feared ageing, laughed at it, cried about it, defied it, accepted it - and written about it. This delightful collection gathers together the most memorable quotations about ageing, including those of William Shakespeare, D H Lawrence, Oscar Wilde and Evelyn Waugh, right up to Margaret Thatcher, Joan Rivers and Jerry Seinfeld.

Would you like to grow in life-giving ways as you age? Do you have the courage to let go of former ways of thinking to receive God's love and life in new ways? As we age, we experience the loss of physical stamina, independence, and career fulfillment. Yet within each of these losses is a holy invitation to grow. God calls us to let go of our need for accomplishment and embrace the gift of fruitfulness so that we might be transformed in this final season of our lives. In Aging Faithfully, spiritual director Alice Fryling explores how to navigate the journey of retirement, lifestyle changes, and new limitations. In this season of life, we are invited to hold both grief and hope, to acknowledge ways of thinking that no longer represent who we are, and to receive peace in the midst of our fears. We all age differently, and God calls each of us to new spiritual birth as we mature. When we embrace the aging process, we grow closer to God and experience his grace as he renews us from within. Whether you are approaching the beginning, middle, or end of your senior years, you are invited. Come and be transformed. Aging Faithfully includes questions for group discussion and suggestions for personal meditation.

Let’s face it: almost everyone fears growing older. We worry about losing our looks, our health, our jobs, our self-esteem—and being supplanted in work and love by younger people. It feels like the natural, inevitable consequence of the passing years, But what if it’s not? What if nearly everything that we think of as the “natural” process of aging is anything but? In Agewise, renowned cultural critic Margaret Morganroth Gullette reveals that much of what we dread about aging is actually the result of ageism—which we can, and should, battle as strongly as we do racism, sexism, and other forms of bigotry. Drawing on provocative and under-reported evidence from biomedicine, literature, economics, and personal stories, Gullette probes the ageism thatdrives discontent with our bodies, our selves, and our accomplishments—and makes us easy prey for marketers who want to sell us an illusory vision of youthful perfection. Even worse, rampant ageism causes society to discount, and at times completely discard, the wisdom and experience acquired by people over the course of adulthood. The costs—both collective and personal—of this culture of decline are almost incalculable, diminishing our workforce, robbing younger people of hope for a decent later life, and eroding the satisfactions and sense of productivity that should animate our later years. Once we open our eyes to the pervasiveness of ageism, however, we can begin to fight it—and Gullette lays out ambitious plans for the whole life course, from teaching children anti-ageism to fortifying the social safety nets, and thus finally making possible the real pleasures and opportunities promised by the new longevity. A bracing, controversial call to arms, Agewise will surprise, enlighten, and, perhaps most important, bring hope to readers of all ages.

A wake-up call to Americans who have long been deluded by the dangerous twenty-first hucksters of longevity. “If old age isn’t for sissies, neither is Susan Jacoby’s tough-minded and important book ... which demolishes popular myths that we can ‘cure’ the ‘disease’ of aging.”—The Washington Post Combining historical, social, and economic analysis with personal experiences of love and loss, Jacoby reveals the hazards of the magical thinking that prevents us from facing the genuine battles of growing old. Never Say Die speaks to Americans, whatever their age, who draw courage and hope from facing reality instead of embracing platitudes and delusions, and who want to grow old with dignity and purpose. It is a life-affirming and powerful message that has never been more relevant.