Prime Time - Jane Fonda [4]
Holding Vanessa during the filming of They Shoot Horses, Dont’t They?
This book is for those of us who, like me, believe that luck is opportunity meeting preparation; that with preparation and knowledge, with information and reflection, we can try to raise the odds of being lucky, and of making our last three decades—our Third Acts—the most peaceful, generous, loving, sensual, transcendent time of all; and that planning for it, especially during one’s middle years, can help make this so.
Wholeness
Arnheim’s staircase made me realize how important it can be to see life as an interplay between one’s beginning, middle, and end. I found out that if we understand more deeply what Act I and Act II are (or were) about, who we are (or were becoming) during those foundational years, what dreams are still to be realized and which regrets addressed, then we can see Act III as a coming to fruition, rather than simply a period of marking time, or the absence of youth. We can understand it not as the far side of the arch—as the decline after the peak—but as a stage of development in its own terms. We can experience it as part of the staircase—with its own challenges and joys, pitfalls and rewards, a stage as evolving and as satisfying and different from midlife or youth as adolescence is from childhood.
In 1996, Erik and Joan Erikson wrote, in The Life Cycle Completed, “Lacking a culturally viable ideal of old age, our civilization does not really harbor a concept of the whole of life.”4 The old ways of thinking about age, the fears of losing our youth and facing our own mortality, have kept us from seeing Act III as a vital, integrated part of our overall story, the potential-filled culmination of the first two acts. This old thinking is even more tragic now, in light of the extension of the life span. It can rob us of wholeness, and it can rob society of what we each, in our ripeness, have to offer.
With my dog Tulea in 2004.
MAX COLIN/ELIOT PRESS
Those of us now entering our Third Acts are, on the whole, physically stronger and healthier than ever before. There is every likelihood that, if we work at it individually and collectively, we can develop a new “culturally viable ideal of old age” and see our lives as a series of stages that build one upon the other. Our doing so will not be just for us; it will represent a major cultural shift for the world around us and will help younger generations reconceive of their own life spans.
I have been inspired and encouraged by what I have learned while writing this book. I hope reading it will do the same for you.
In Part One, I set the stage by discussing the three acts of life, the challenges and gifts that each of them presents, and ways for you to begin to step back—now, at whatever act you are in—and become a witness to your own life, in all its stages, and thus see better how to live the rest of it with greater intention, freedom, and clarity. I also write about how doing a life review transformed how I am living my Third Act.
In Part Two, I write about the body, the brain, and our attitudes. There’s some pretty good news there, as well as a new word: Positivity! I also, in Chapter 10, go into detail about how to write a life review.
Part Three goes into every dimension of love, friendship, and sex, including how to meet new people. You’ll find a few good laughs in there, along with a lot of handy tips.
Part Four isn’t what you’d expect in a book like this. But some of the most respected experts on aging believe—as do I—that to mount that staircase of late-life development as a fully realized person, we need to become advocates for the future. This can mean mentoring young children or protecting abused women; it can mean caring for the planet, feeling some responsibility for the big picture beyond ourselves. The psychiatrist