by Brian Balke | Jan 31, 2020 | Active Aging, Book Reviews
When at 35 my hair began to turn gray, my female friends teased that I better had start coloring it, With a roll of the eyes, my retort was “When it’s completely gray, I’ll want people to know that I’ve made it that far.” Now nearing 60 little of the pepper is left,...
by Brian Balke | Dec 14, 2019 | Active Aging
Conserving Identity When we are young, we respond “policeman” or “nurse” or “astronaut” when asked “What do you want to be when you grow up?” For many of us, it’s not until almost mid-life that we might realize that we didn’t understand the question. “Being” is about...
by Brian Balke | Nov 12, 2019 | Active Aging, Specializations
Life in Harmony Developed in the third quarter of the 20th century, the Ericksons’ Stages of Development end at age 65. Today if we live to 65, we have a 50% chance of living to 90. Given that nearly a third of life can be lived after retirement, we would expect to...
by Brian Balke | Oct 30, 2019 | Active Aging, Specializations
Inner Peace What does inner peace look like? To many, it would be a serene spiritual figure – the Virgin Mary, Gandhi, or White Tara. Can we imagine becoming that? Probably not, and it’s not what I mean by “inner peace.” Inner peace is not an endpoint, it’s a...
by Brian Balke | Oct 12, 2019 | Active Aging
Spiritual Deepening The conscious mind serves to protect our personality from accepting harmful judgments. Sometimes those judgments are positive, such as when a caregiver is told “but you’re doing a great job” when a request for help is refused. Sometimes judgments...
by Brian Balke | Oct 7, 2019 | Active Aging, Specializations
Life Review While philosophers make much of reason, the most complex parts of the mind evolved to help us create communities. Community starts with the family – we look at our parents’ faces and find comfort or distress. Sometimes those responses are instinctive: when...
