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Pursuing
a Passion — at Any Age
by Kathie Hightower
The Tacoma News Tribune just ran a fascinating article about life on
the road for a theater group from New York, presenting the musical Cabaret
in one show per city in 92 cities. A "mostly young group"
of actors. But there is also Lucy Sorlucco, one of two actors over 50
on the tour.
Lucy, trained to teach and sing, did social work while her two sons
were growing. "I told my youngest, ‘when you go back to school,
that’s when I join the circus again,’" and she did.
I don’t know about you, but I’ve always been a bit depressed
by the stories of people who find their passion at an early age and
pursue it with full force. You know, those children who start ice skating
or playing the violin or playing doctor at four and pursue that love
from then on. That certainly wasn’t my story — at 35 and later
I was still trying to figure out what I wanted to do when I grew up.
What I’m really drawn to are stories like Lucy’s — of
people pursuing their passion, no matter when they get to start that
full pursuit. Whether they identify it late in life or finally make
time for it late in life, those stories are an inspiration to me for
my own life as they show me that possibilities don’t close down
at a
set age.
One woman competing in the Olympics is a great example of this finding
passion later in life — and pursuing it full out.
Anne Abernathy was nicknamed "Grandma Luge" by fellow competitors.
She was the oldest Olympic luge competitor in 1988, 1992, and 1994.
During the 1994 Olympic Games she was the oldest Olympian in any sport.
In 1998, at 44, she became the oldest female athlete in any sport to
successfully compete in the history of the Winter Olympic Games. This
year in Salt Lake City, she’ll be only the 7th woman to be in five
Olympics. She will be 48 years 317 days old at the conclusion of her
Salt Lake event (in sports you have to know exact numbers for records.)
Soon to be featured on the Discovery Channel for her amazing return
from a crash that resulted in a severe closed head injury, Anne’s
is a fascinating story. She did not play sports growing up, because
her mother wouldn’t let her. She did not participate in sports
in high school and college as she was too involved in theatre and music.
She was 30 years old when she first tried the Luge and found her passion.
She began training for the 1988 Calgary Games at 33, the same age as
her coach who had just retired from competition due to his age.
There is a lot more to Anne’s story — pursuing her passion
despite nine knee surgeries, Hodgkin’s disease and this last crash
that no one expected her to come back from. She’s given up a lot
to pursue this passion. But talk to her and you hear the richness of
life that she has gained.
I collect stories of people finding and pursuing new passions in their
later years.
• There’s Penny Soldatos, who took a clowning class at 55
and now performs at shopping centers, hospitals, and company picnics.
• There’s Herbert S. Kirk, who took up running in his 90s
and earned an art degree at 97.
• There’s Lakewood resident, Fenya Crown, who ran her first
marathon at age 70 and last year ran in the Rome marathon at 88.
They are all examples for me of the fact that "it’s never
too late to pursue a new passion," or as George Elliot said, "It’s
never too late to become who you might have been."
Now…if you say you want to become a famous opera singer, but you
are age 80, and have never sung or even taken a singing class…am
I going to say you can accomplish your new goal? I’m certainly
not going to say you can’t.
What I would immediately say is, "Great idea, let’s see what
you can do right away."
You could:
• Sign up for a voice class
• Join the Opera Society
• Listen to great opera on tapes and on video
• Search the web for opera groups, possibly opera chat groups
• Read the biographies of opera singers
• Sing in the shower, sing in your car, sing every chance you get
• Attend opera — and probably get back stage tours as part
of the Opera Society
• Join your church choir
And as more and more people live to be 100 now, you might just have
twenty years left to pursue that new passion. That’s a lot of time
— I expect an opera singer could make a lot of progress in 20 years!
Here’s the most important thing. Whether or not you ever became
a famous opera singer, you’d enhance your life immeasurably by
diving in and pursuing a passion. Rather than sitting back saying, "I
wish I had…."
So…what are you waiting for? What passion have you put on the back
burner — or given up on entirely because you thought you were too
old? What new passion interests you? You don’t have to run off
and join the circus…but then again, who knows? You just might.
Kathie Hightower is author of Simple Joys and Your Enchanted Life:
A Work/Playbook for Discovery & Delight. She does workshops on ways
to pump up your energy, creativity and joy. She can be reached through
her website www.jumpintolife.net. And some of her latest passions? Learning
Italian. Learning to bake rustic breads. Working on her writing skills
one-on-one with a tutor.
©copyright 2002 Kathie Hightower
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Fast
Food or Slow Food
by Kathie Hightower
I just read an article in the Tacoma Tribune Business section that stopped
me. Associated Press writer Hope Yen reports that as the Campbell Soup
Company tries to keep up with competition, their "target audience
is people like attorney Albert Kim, who was a fan of Campbell’s
chicken noodle soup as a kid but rarely touches the stuff now.
‘When you’re busy and looking for a meal, it’s not worth
the effort to open a can, put (it) in a pan, pour in water, and wait
for it to simmer,’ Kim, 28, said as he rushed off to the office
recently, a banana in hand."
Amazing. To think that opening a can and adding water can seem like
too much time and effort! Times sure change. The article reports that
when condensed soups were introduced in 1897, they were marketed as
a quick, tasty alternative to homemade soups, quickly became bestsellers,
and "in the process helped spawn the 20th-century convenience-food
movement." Now this convenience food is seen as inconvenient, time-consuming
food.
I remember one evening in Berlin, Germany, when I was nine, living there
as a "civil service brat." We had some older German friends
over for dinner. They watched my younger brother make instant Jello
chocolate pudding, just amazed that you didn’t have to cook it.
"Cook pudding?" we asked. "Why would you do that?"
Just add milk, stir and stick it in the fridge.
Today, even that "instant" pudding probably takes too long.
Just open the tub and spoon it out.
When I mention the soup article and my thoughts to my 80-years-young
mother-in-law, Naomi, she nods.
"I remember how my mother had to go out and catch a chicken every
Sunday — and then kill it and pluck it before cooking" she
says. "I just opened a lid and microwaved some chicken and dumplings
for lunch today. Things sure change."
They sure do change — and speed up. Okay, I admit to having mixed
feelings about all this.
On the one hand, if things keep speeding up like this where will it
all end? As we’ve seen grocery stores add ready-to-bake frozen
bread dough, slice-and-bake cookies, already cut up veggies for stir-fry
and frozen stirfry ready-to-heat, cake icing in a can, prepackaged,
ready-to-eat lunches, all the frozen meals ready to microwave in minutes,
even items like scrambled eggs and bacon ready to microwave, can the
George Jetson meal-in-a-pill be far behind? And would we want that?
Not me.
On the other hand, cooking is not one of my favorite activities. And
I do appreciate convenience items when they allow me to focus my time
and energy on activities that I’m passionate about like reading,
writing, gardening, learning.
On the other hand (I sometimes think we need more than two hands to
deal with life nowadays), I also love to sit down to a long slow dinner
with family and friends, with lots of laughter and conversation. Wonderful
made-from-scratch homemade meals add to that experience. And I want
those experiences much more frequently than annual Thanksgiving dinners.
I was delighted to hear about the Slow Food Movement, started in Italy
in 1986, billed as the "international movement for the defense
of and the right to pleasure." Their manifesto, spelled out in
full at the website www.slowfood.com, reads in part:
"We are enslaved by speed and have all succumbed to the same insidious
virus: Fast Life, which disrupts our habits, pervades the privacy of
our homes and forces us to eat Fast Foods….
A firm defense of quiet material pleasure is the only way to oppose
the universal folly of Fast Life.
May suitable doses of guaranteed sensual pleasure and slow, long-lasting
enjoyment preserve us from the contagion of the multitude who mistake
frenzy for efficiency.
Our defense should begin at the table with Slow Food."
I guess I choose to be thankful for living in this century and for having
choices. Some days I’ll quickly heat up that can of Progresso soup
and be thankful I don’t have to take extra time to add water, as
I rush off to some activity I’m excited to be doing. And other
days I‘ll choose to slow down and savor the process and pleasure
of making soups and bread and desserts from scratch. Of enjoying a Slow
Meal with my family and friends.
But I draw the line at chasing down the chicken.
©copyright 2002 Kathie Hightower
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Gratitude
has Two Parts
by Kathie Hightower
The day after our national tragedy, on September 12, I joined a prayer/meditation
circle. We used a breathing/meditation tape by Thich Naht Hahn.
One friend mentioned that Thich Naht Hahn began to meditation and use
the breath as a way to help himself heal from the horrors he witnessed
during the war in Vietnam. He seemed an appropriate guide for us trying
to deal with the horrors we have witnessed now in our own country.
One mantra that he used on the tape kept playing in my head through
the days that followed.
"I am alive. Breath itself is a miracle."
Those words brought me right into a deep feeling of gratitude. Like
everyone, the September 11 events had me thinking over and over again,
"That could easily have been me." Although I’ve never
been to the World Trade Center in NYC, I do fly often — and very
often coast to coast.
Every year for the past six years, I’ve spent my two weeks of Army
Reserve duty at the Pentagon. My office there is not in the portion
that was hit, but like anyone who works there, I’ve certainly walked
through those very corridors many times on my way to meetings or to
lunch. Yes, I’m grateful that I was not flying that day and that
I was not at the Pentagon.
One good thing that has come out of this tragedy is indeed a new depth
of gratitude for the basics. Those of us who were not personally impacted
by a death might feel guilty that we get to go on with life while others
don’t. But we can’t help but feeling grateful — for being
able to breathe, for being alive, for being able to hug a loved one.
I hope we hang on to that new focus.
It’s important to be aware that there are two parts to gratitude.
First, it’s important to be aware, to acknowledge what is already
good in our lives. In our fast-paced, materialistic world, we often
focus on what we don’t have rather than on what we do.
I’ve kept a gratitude journal for many years now. I got the idea
from Sarah Ban Breathnach’s wonderful book, Simple Abundance. I’ve
since found many ways to go about it.
One way is to sit down at one time and write down 100 things you are
grateful for in your life. Yes, that means some of them will be seemingly
small things, but it’s often the accumulation of small joys that
make up our feeling of happiness in life. Even if you can’t manage
to come up with 100, just trying to get there will put you right into
a feeling of abundance.
A different approach is to write down ten things you are grateful for.
Then, each morning and each night for thirty days, read the list and
add one more. By the end of thirty days, you’ll have shifted yourself
right into abundance.
Don’t just take it from me that this is a good idea. Research proves
it out. The feature story of the September 3, 2001 issue of U.S. News
& World Report was called How to Make Yourself Happy. One study
reported on was done by Robert Emmons at the University of California-Davis.
He found that "people who wrote down five things for which they
were grateful in weekly or daily journals were not only more joyful;
they were healthier, less stressed, more optimistic, and more likely
to help others."
An attitude of gratitude is certainly the first step. But there is a
step two. That is to take steps, to take action, to keep those good
things in your life.
We tend to take the good things for granted. I know I took my ability
to walk and to climb steps for granted — until the day I sprained
my ankle so badly that I was on crutches for many weeks. We all know
of cases where someone has taken a relationship — or their health
— for granted, and then watched them go away.
Sure, there are things we can’t control about our health and other
things that might be good at the moment. But there is a lot we can control.
Newsweek just ran a special edition called Health for Life. Full of
fascinating studies, one is the 25-year Nurses Study, an amazingly comprehensive
study conducted with 100,000 nurses. The results are summarized in a
new book, Healthy Women, Healthy Lives. One finding: "More than
80 percent of heart attacks, strokes and diabetes in women are preventable
by lifestyle modifications."
Let September 11 be a wake up call. Figure out what is already good
in your life and do what you can to keep it there.
©copyright 2002 Kathie Hightower
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Legacy
of LIFE — Lessons From Liz
by Kathie Hightower
I just spent a few days visiting family and friends in the small northwest
coastal community of Manzanita, Oregon. The place was buzzing with excitement.
Liz Carpenter, former press secretary for Lady Bird Johnson, was renting
a house in town for the summer.
The word spreads quickly in small towns. Even with out-of-towners. As
I stood in one shop talking to a friend about Liz, a young woman stepped
up. "I couldn’t help overhearing," she said. "I
heard yesterday that Liz Carpenter was here. I had no idea who she was
because that was before my time. But my mother was SO excited when I
told her."
The simple fact of a celebrity staying in town would normally cause
initial excitement and interest that might have faded into the background
of daily life. But in this case, Liz added a bit more to the local scene
and a lesson in life for all of us.
Liz did not come to town planning to remain anonymous and private as
some celebrities might. She came to create her summer of "house
parties" that she experienced in other years in places like Martha’s
Vineyard.
This 81-years-young woman who is not very physically mobile surrounds
herself with interesting people of all ages and all backgrounds —
local folks and friends invited in for short stays. She’s creating
community and deepening local community connections.
Her visit is a whirlwind of social gatherings, in effect creating salon-type
experiences for everyone involved.
One evening dinner was the kind of dinner with a mix of interesting
people talking about a wide variety of topics late into the evening.
Over a wonderful mix of northwest culinary delights, from salmon to
Willamette Valley raspberries, the conversation flowed — from politics
to books to death and dying to dreams for the future.
One afternoon Liz invited guests into her house for ice cream sundaes
and entertainment. Her friend Carol Channing sang for the guests accompanied
by another friend on piano. I have it from a confidential source that
Liz is not a great singer, but that didn’t stop her — or anyone
else — from joining in a sing along and thoroughly enjoying themselves.
Later, the winner of England’s Slam Poetry national competition,
friend to Liz for more than 20 years, presented two of her poems —
Liz’s favorites.
One weekend Liz and another author friend will be reading from their
books at the local community center, open to everyone. Liz is creating
her own fun and sharing it, too.
In a world that is becoming increasingly isolated as people stay inside
their homes to watch TV or spend hours on the Internet, where "cocooning"
has become part of our vocabulary as people pull into their homes, Liz
is going in the opposite direction.
Before radio and television, people did create their own entertainment.
They gathered together for sing alongs and to tell stories. They sat
on their porches talking with their neighbors in the evening. They played
games together. Their kids put on plays in the backyard for the adults
in the neighborhood.
We can all do what Liz does, creating greater community and connection
right where we are. Okay, you might not have a celebrity like Carol
Channing in your circle of friends. But you probably know someone who
loves to sing or play piano or play guitar, someone who would be happy
to lead a sing along with your own gathering.
You might not be an author or know a famous author to invite to do a
book reading. But you probably know writers and poets in your area who
would be thrilled to be asked to do a reading in your home. (If you
don’t know anyone, contact the writer groups listed in your local
paper or post an invitation in the library.)
I know one couple in Oregon who have created an annual Lip Sync evening.
Friends and family gather for a big potluck in their backyard. And everyone
who wants to — and many do — prepare a song that they lip
sync to, complete with costumes and simple sets and a "microphone"
made out of an old shower head. All ages take part since it doesn’t
require talent — it just requires imagination and a sense of fun.
This simple community evening grows larger with each year, with more
and more people stepping up to the mike. You might start your own Lip
Sync or invite the neighborhood kids to put on backyard theater for
everyone to enjoy.
Take a lesson from Liz — create the kind of experience and community
you most enjoy — wherever you are.
(Writer’s note: If you want to experience an oceanfront rental
like Liz is, check out www.oceanedge-vacation-rentals.com or call Julianne
at 503-368-3343. With or without celebrities, Manzanita is magical and
a great community of about 800 people and 28 elk!)
2001, Kathie Hightower
©2002 Kathie Hightower
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