Tuesday, March 16, 2010

My Dream

My dream is to create a new college curriculum for Seniors (those people over age 65) and Disappointed Adults (people of any age who have lost their youthful dreams, and maybe jobs, and want to start their productive lives over again}.

Today, many colleges and universities (and some community colleges) have “Lifelong Learning Institutes for Seniors”, programs for folks who are bored with “retirement” and want to spend some of their empty time studying subjects they weren’t able to take as undergraduates.

For me and for many Seniors, “retirement” can be the first stage of obsolescing and dying. We have lost our “job”; we have said goodbye to co-workers and our productive way of life. We are cast adrift in a limbo of no work, no responsibilities, and no real reason to go on living. So we fish, we go on trips, we visit grandchildren, and we slowly but surely die of boredom. We become invisible to younger people, we become more and more repressed, depressed, lost in the free-floating debris of aging.

Yet, we may still have one, two, five, ten or more years of relatively healthy and vigorous life. But what can we meaningfully, productively do with those days? What can there be between productive youth/middle age, and retirement, sickness and death? Of what worth am I now, age 76 going on 77, in this amazing new era of youth, vigor and vitality?

Is it the right time to look at myself, and, and the people around me who are both younger and older? Can I breathe new life into myself and maybe into many of those who have retired from meaningful jobs and maybe from life? By helping them, can I help myself as well?

Can we indeed retire from retirement? Can we create new life, and maybe a new career at this advanced age? Can we find a new passion, a new purpose in our existence; to keep us awake, aware, and eager for another new day, a new year, perhaps another score of years?

I have a new dream to create a college curriculum for Seniors and other Disappointed Adults who are looking for a New Way in their own life.

I am starting to create an adult college level Creative Aging Seminar and organize it to help us discover our hidden potential with new possibilities and a new future in our own lives. I have found professional geriatric, psychiatric, medical, creative and financial experts who are eager to help us revitalize our lives. These Seminars can become reality in my town and in your town as well. All we need is a dream and the will to do it.

Want to join the Senior Adventure of our lives?

Contact me at: rreed@ram-mail.com