The Highway From Rise up to Reverence

By the point folks attain their seventh decade, they’ve discovered many classes. From a psychological standpoint, they perceive what actually issues. They’ve discovered what to let go of. They know what they should be comfortable. Additionally they acknowledge the significance of being kinder to themselves and the way relationships and experiences are extra essential than possessions. They have a tendency to mirror on classes discovered and infrequently recuperate extra simply from adversity. Additionally they concentrate on wanting the very best for his or her family members.

My Story

I’m a 71-year-old mom of three grownup youngsters and 6 grandchildren. The nurturing a part of me desires to guard my household from all that threatens their security, dignity, or emotional well-being. I need them to develop up in a peaceable world the place all women and men are created equal, the place music brings us collectively, and the place everybody has an opportunity to self-actualize. This can be idealistic, however that’s the way in which I really feel. My goals for my grandkids are as lofty as they had been for the three lovely youngsters I introduced into the world.

I used to be born within the Fifties and raised in New York through the hippie era. I frolicked in head retailers within the suburbs of New York Metropolis, wore beaded necklaces, walked barefoot within the park, burned incense, and listened to music beneath black lights. As a result of I had bronchial asthma, I by no means acquired into smoking marijuana, however I did protest the warfare and say goodbye to pals who went to struggle in Vietnam. I fought for quite a few causes and wore cut-off denims that swept the soiled streets. By the way, I even openly wore the American flag slung like a shawl round my shoulders. As a author, I stuffed my journal with musings in regards to the utopian world of my goals.

The Hippie Technology

The hippie era was, in essence, an emotional riot towards the senseless path wherein our world was headed. The Nineteen Sixties counterculture requested questions and begged for solutions—and wished peace. From a psychological perspective, it was additionally a collective seek for that means, autonomy, and belonging—core human wants that floor most forcefully throughout occasions of upheaval. Historical past has a manner of circling again, and the circumstances that fueled that period—division, violence, unchecked energy—right this moment really feel uncomfortably acquainted. Maybe what is required once more isn’t chaos, however conscience.

For my final birthday, a childhood pal referred to as to want me a cheerful birthday. We reminisced in regards to the peace and love spirit of the Nineteen Sixties, and the way we now really feel the identical stirrings—the will to come back collectively, create and instill change, and produce calm to unsettled occasions. We acknowledge the identical quiet pull towards activism that we felt many years earlier, now tempered by reflection moderately than urgency.

Cultural Shifts

In analyzing right this moment’s cultural shifts, it’s straightforward to see parallels to the hippie era, which was a time of extra—racial violence, warfare, company greed, and a buildup of intolerance and dissatisfaction. Medicine had been widespread throughout that point; the present drug wars and the current legalization of marijuana in lots of states illuminate one other parallel. At the moment, social media amplifies voices that when went unheard, creating each connection and combustion—circumstances ripe for transformation.

Like Buddhist trainer Thich Nhat Hanh says, “No mud no lotus.” Additionally, the Hopi, Native People, recognized for his or her peaceable nature and quiet resilience, consider that darkness is a prerequisite to experiencing transformation. Utilizing this metaphor, their mythology emphasizes that though the caterpillar has already grow to be the butterfly within the darkness, it begins to maneuver contained in the cocoon and present life once more. Nonetheless, it doesn’t start to interrupt out of the cocoon till it’s prepared (Schaefer, 2006). Solely then is it able to share its messages.

Messages to Future Generations

As an elder, I need to be the messenger to my children and grandchildren and encourage them to maintain the religion, be compassionate, and promote the facility of interconnectedness. As was mentioned within the Nineteen Sixties, “Make love, not warfare.” This isn’t only a slogan; it’s very important to our collective well-being. The resurgence of the hippie revolution merely signifies that we have to reevaluate outdated ideas and usher in contemporary new concepts. It is perhaps a very good time to revisit books akin to The Hippie Dictionaryby John Bassett McCleary (2004), which is known as a historical past e book that casts a lovely image of these occasions. McCleary highlights some phrases within the e book’s introduction that I believe nonetheless apply right this moment, akin to “hold in there” and “carry on trucking.” Most significantly, let’s take note among the phrases in that dictionary and the core of what this nation was constructed upon: “A democracy is a society or type of authorities wherein the inhabitants is given the chance to contribute to the choices that govern them.”

We’re nonetheless an ongoing experiment…and hopefully all the time will probably be.

Celebrating the Growing old Course of

My new e book, co-edited with my colleague Chryss Yost, referred to as Girls in a Golden State: California Girls 60 and Past (Gunpowder Press, 2025), amplifies celebrating and honoring the growing old course of, and the prevalence of resilience, knowledge, and transformation. As McCleary indicated, it’s essential that we make our opinions recognized by means of writing or speaking with the collective.

As Gabor Mate says in his e book The Delusion of Regular, “All of it begins with waking up: waking up to what’s actual and genuine in and round us and what isn’t; waking as much as who we’re and who we’re not; waking as much as what our our bodies are expressing and what our minds are suppressing; waking as much as our wounds and items….”