Mysteries of male elderhood: testosterone, presence and purpose.

When I turned sixty in 2008, I set a clear intent of moving into elderhood, growing beyond my prevailing warrior-hero approach to life. Six years on, I can report good progress but further mysteries.

For most of my adult life, I have been a happy workaholic: drawn to situations where I had lots of challenge and responsibility, working in a state of high adrenaline which gave purpose and structure to my life, and paved over the murky depths beneath.

All this has been dissolving and under scrutiny since I turned 50. I have made numerous descents into the murky depths, sometimes just falling in, sometimes an orderly visit properly equipped with a therapist. I aim to be friends with the early wounds and neurotic habits which still thrash around in those depths: I don’t believe they ever disappear, but an elder has their measure.

Quick Book Notes – Charles Eisenstein: The more beautiful world our hearts know is possible

This book is a sort of guide to the New Story: not what it is but, a clear, compassionate process of how to move into it.  He illuminates the personal and societal habits and mindsets holding us back, and their benign successors.

He sums up the New Story as “the story of Interbeing, the Age of Reunion... the world of the gift.”  Whereas, “More than anything external, it is our own habits that draw us back into the old story... habits of scarcity,...judgement, and... struggle.”  But as he points out, giving attention to a habit and the feelings underlying it weaken its addictive power.

Since the New Story is about interconnection, he warns against its advocates feeling righteous, which perpetuates separation and alienates others.  “Today, our economic environment screams at us, “Scarcity!” ... political... “Us versus them”, ... medical... “Be afraid!”  Together they keep us alone and scared to change.”  Whereas in truth “fundamentally we are the same being looking out at the world through many sets of eyes”.