Be Part of the “Modern Elder” Movement
Photo by Esther Ann on Unsplash
A couple of years ago, while one with my now-deceased iPod Classic during a workout, I listened to a very stimulating podcast interview with Chip Conley, who, at the time, was a few years into an executive management position with Airbnb.
His is a very intriguing story of how he came into Airbnb, at age 52, as “an award-winning hospitality veteran with a disruptive entrepreneurial streak” and ended up as “an intern surrounded by smart, passionate employees half his age, with twice the digital smarts.”
He was both humbled and inspired by the experience.
From it, he coined two new terms for himself at Airbnb: “modern elder” and “mentern” (part mentor, part intern).
The Airbnb experience appears to have inspired Chip in yet another interesting direction, further igniting his entrepreneurial fires, but this time applying them in more of a not-for-profit, social activist vein.
Conley was recently selected as one of the top 12 “2019 Influencers In Aging” by NextAvenue.org, a subsidiary of the Public Broadcasting System. He is amongst an elite group of “advocates, researchers, thought leaders, innovators, writers, and experts that continue to push beyond traditional boundaries and change our understanding of what it means to grow older.”
Mr. Conley popped up on my radar screen again this week via another interview, this time published in Forbes and conducted by Next Avenue Managing Editor Richard Eisenberg (who I had the good fortune to meet and spend some time with last month at a Retirement Coaches conference in Detroit.)
I encourage you to link to the interview here.
Middlescence – a new cultural portal
In just the last year, Conley has released a new book “Wisdom at Work: The Making of a Modern Elder” and founded a “boutique resort for midlife leaning and reflection” in Mexico called the Modern Elder Academy.
Tagged as the “ first midlife wisdom school”, it has already been attended by 500 students from 17 countries.
Conley’s efforts are inspiring to me, on several levels.
From it, a new and better “cultural portal” classification has emerged – middlescence.
On 7/2/18, I published an article Time For a New Cultural Portal 
that spoke to how we have, with the help of creative social scientists and enterprising capitalists, expanded from two cultural portals 150 years ago (childhood – adulthood) to seven today (newborn, infancy, childhood, adolescence, young adult, middle age, and old age).
Now, with Conley’s help, we have a better term for that clumsy portal called middle-age and its offspring, the “mid-life crisis” with its sexist, trophy-wife, bling, sports car symptoms.
I think – I hope – Conley and The Modern Elder Academy and the response to it is a sign that we are starting to acknowledge that this phase of life – i.e. elderhood – is beginning a comeback where ageism diminishes and elders are once again held in respect and their wisdom leveraged back into our culture.
Middlescence makes sense in its more definitive description of this (now) extended period of our lives – what I have been calling and will continue to call, the third age.
As the article points out, it generally happens in the fifties and is a time we move from:
- Accumulating to editing
- Less ego, more soul
- Less interesting, more interested
- Less achieving and attaining, more creating a legacy and attuning.
Chip Conley is singing my tune.
I hope he is singing yours. I wish I had thought all this up. But I’m OK just being a courier.
I’m a late-stage septuagenarian with a middlescence mindset. Without it, I haven’t got a prayer of getting to my target of living to 112 ½.
My wife of 49 years is, and always has been, a trophy in so many ways; I look terrible with bling and an open shirt collar; a convertible in Colorado just makes an ego trip way too obvious.
“Middlescence” is just what the doctor ordered for my quest.
Are you a “comeback elder”?
How are you preparing for elderhood?
How will you stay relevant?
How will you survive your new longevity? Drifting? Or with purpose?
Important questions for us all as we break through as “modern elders”.
Love it , Love it, Love it. Thank you, once again! I’m all in. pat
Thanks Pat.
Great post Gary, Love it!
Don
Thanks Don.
Inspirational Gary my legacy is a work in progress. Thank you for the uplifting story.
Thanks Phil. Glad you found value in the post. Chip Coney is doing some very inspiring things. I just bought his book and am looking forward to reading it.
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