Because I’m getting emails like the one that showed up this morning from Steven Frank, a career geriatric health care administrator. In 2013, when Frank was 62, he lost his wife and his business—difficult transitions that led him to question his trajectory, open a practice as a consultant/coach to people “seeking to inhabit their own lives,” and aspire to becoming such a person. “That process led me to the subject of ageism,” Frank wrote, “the rewards of accentuating the positives of aging rather than repairing the worst, and to examine what constitutes a ‘Life Well Lived’—not coincidentally the name of my practice. Just this evening, it also led me to you and ‘This Chair Rocks.’ It was like turning on a light switch, at once illuminating and electric. I’m not a glum person by nature, but I was suffused with an energy, optimism and excitement that I haven’t experienced since my high school sweetheart introduced me to a much earlier epiphany. Love at first sight. Inspirational, creative, energizing, personally meaningful…a WOW experience. I just wanted to thank you and your colleagues in the field for opening a door to a brave new world.”
It’s going to take all of us to shape that new world. I’m delighted to have been introduced to one of them today.