Prime Time - Jane Fonda [112]
I looked for organizations that enable seniors to give back, and I found the following listed in the International Longevity Center’s book The Longevity Prescription: How to Maximize the Three-Decade Dividend.
THE EXPERIENCE CORPS: The mission of this organization is to “partner with schools and local community organizations to create meaningful opportunities for adults over 55 to meet society’s greatest challenges.” The Experience Corps has programs in place in twenty cities across the nation. The website is www.experiencecorps.org.
RESERVE, INC.: Its mission is to connect experienced retired professionals with compensated service opportunities that challenge them to use their lifetime skills for the public good: www.reserveinc.org.
CIVIC VENTURES: This group seeks to encourage experienced workers approaching retirement to redeploy their expertise to address serious social problems in areas such as the environment, education, health care, and homelessness: www.civicventures.org and www.encore.org.
It has been my experience that the most powerful and rewarding forms of Generativity are those that have personal relevance. For instance, I enjoy and am good at working with (and creating organizations that work with) adolescents because I so vividly recall how difficult my own adolescence was and what it was that I lacked: someone to listen to me and make me feel safe with self-revelation. Similarly, I am drawn to work within organizations such as Eve Ensler’s V-Day: Until the Violence Stops because so many women I know—including my mother—have been victims of violence and abuse and I’m sure that, if we can stop the violence, just about every single thing in the world will change! In doing this work, I am moving from the core of my being and with my heart. I do not view it as charity! Charity, as I see it, means creating safety nets. But people can get caught in safety nets. True Generativity is creating trampolines, not safety nets.
CHAPTER 17
Ripening the Time: A Challenge for Women
Another world is not only possible, she is on her way. On a quiet day, I can hear her breathing.
—ARUNDHATI ROY
What is required today is after all what the great religions have asked of human beings, to treat others as we ourselves want to be treated, to accept social responsibilities and to exercise stewardship over all creation. We don’t know if or when the time will be ripe for such a transformation, but we do believe that all of us should be striving to ripen the time.
—PAUL ERLICH
With Bella Abzug.
WE’VE LIVED FOR FIVE, SIX, SEVEN, EIGHT DECADES OR MORE, long enough to know that the world is in major trouble. Call me an alarmist but, to paraphrase my friend Robin Morgan, being an alarmist is a principled choice when there is cause for alarm.
This is way beyond equal wages and glass ceilings. I have come to the conclusion that nothing less than the long-term survival of our species—of our planet, actually—will depend on women moving into leadership positions in every arena: electoral, judicial, spiritual, financial, psychological, community-based, artistic.
Far be it from me to be holier-than-thou in the denial department; I’ve done plenty of denial in my time. I understand that to face what’s happening means being called to act, and that’s tough. Some of us have a need to cling to what we want to believe despite evidence to the contrary. One’s identity can be bound up in a certain belief system, and to examine it is to throw one’s very being into question—If this isn’t true, then who am I?
We need to answer the question “Then who am I?” with a resounding “We are wise enough women, ready to speak our truths to power even if it means dredging up the truths we’ve been trying to bury.” Some anthropologists believe that with age, women reclaim their assertive, aggressive traits, which they may have repressed