From & To Sathish #7 - Page 128

How to redesign your life

By Shoba Narayan, Wisdom Circle, 3 October 2023

In 2018, the Stanford Center on Longevity launched an initiative called The New Map of Life. The headline for the initiative simply read:

“The 100-year-life is here, and we are not ready.”

What does this mean? Simply put, barring unforeseen circumstances, we all can expect to live longer than our parents or grandparents. But are we designing lives for longevity? I am not sure. But we need to think about this.

For our parents and grandparents, life was linear. You were a student, then a householder and worker, then you retired. Today, things are a little more complicated. People pivot mid-career to something quite different. Entrepreneurs take the plunge at 50. Students take a year off and sometimes drop out of college altogether. Women (and some men) take time off to raise kids and then come back into the workforce. People decide to be gig workers rather than employees. This zig-zagging is both frightening and freeing.

Say you are 54 and you are reading this essay. Okay, you think, let me redesign my life to adjust for the fact that I may live longer. What would you do? Would you buy that Lamborghini that you have been dreaming about with the money that you have put away for medical emergencies? Before you say, of course not, just think for a minute. You are only 54. If science is to be believed, and barring medical misfortunes, you have a good 20 years of productive life ahead of you. Isn’t that enough to replenish your savings? Isn’t it time to live your dream?

As you can tell by now, the old linear and rigid models of going through life may be turned on their head. In the past, we were told to slow down at 55 and retire at 65. This is no longer necessary. Instead, you can continue to incorporate work, pleasure, family, education and enterprise into your lives till you are 75—at least. How to do this?

One thing that seems to be obvious is a nimble mindset that learns and -- equally important – unlearns -- as you age. Let me make this personal.

For me, as a writer in my fifties, I have a choice right now: I can learn and engage with Chat GPT or not. I can engage with AI (Artificial Intelligence) or not. I can learn about new forms of content creation that include interactive personalized videos that play well on Tik Tok and Instagram -- or not.

Now, I don’t consider myself a tech novice. I have learned to maintain my own website and love apps. But it still scares me to go down the road of Chat GPT because it means unlearning everything I thought I knew about writing. It means learning to engage with an algorithm and improve on it. But if I want to stay nimble, I have to do it. I have to do those things that frighten me. I have to learn to do things that I did in the beginning of my career even though I think of myself as a “senior” journalist. I have to pitch editors on topics that I know little about— bitcoin, AI, block chain and NFTs because, guess what, that’s where the money is? Adapting to new fields is happening at warp speed in every profession, be it finance, medicine or journalism. We all have to keep up or run the danger of being left behind.

A good way to keep up is to start something new, be it a business or a product. A start-up forces you to cultivate the beginner’s mindset. Today, more folks are pivoting to second careers or start-ups in their forties and fifties. The rationale is that they will still get a good ten to fifteen years to grow the business. As a woman, I have been thinking a lot about this. Common wisdom says that you need to start new things in your twenties and thirties. But for women who elect to raise children, this paradigm could flip. You could ramp up your career after your kids are in high-school, when you are in your forties or fifties. My kids are not home now. I have the time and the energy to go full-steam ahead, take on multiple projects or even start something new. This too is liberating, and it must be said, a little scary.

Age and maturity have certain strong benefits though. A number of studies have talked about the U-bend of happiness, suggesting that we are unhappiest when we are middle-aged and that happiness increases as we age. Scientists give a lot of reasons for this. As we age, we face our mortality and adjust our expectations of what we expect from not just life but also from ourselves. We take stock and realise that we cannot be that hip millionaire rock-musician with perfect lives and kids. The ups and downs that we have surfed and endured teaches us humility, gives us perspective. Even ideas of what happiness is changes as we age. In an interview, Dr. Laura Carstensen, director of the Stanford Center on Longevity says that happiness in older adults is nuanced. “They are more likely to experience joy with a tear in the eye than younger people are. We see a kind of a savoring and an appreciation, that’s what captures the emotional experience. It is not a uniform, simplistic, happy.”

As we age, we are often asked to give advice to young adults starting their careers, and there are many things that we say about spending, saving, and forming relationships. But here is one mind-boggling fact. The way we humans are ageing, you may well be a young adult if you are in your forties. And 60 to quote the old cliché is the quite literally, the new 30.

Your best years are ahead of you. The question is: what are you going to do about it?

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/ckgdp4923rdo

Once-in-a-generation solar eclipse wows millions in UK and Europe

https://www.yahoo.com/tech/science/articles/small-battery-ringing-bell-continuously-221506590.html

A small battery has been ringing a bell continuously since 1840. No one knows what’s inside.

https://www.theguardian.com/news/2026/aug/11/the-great-silence-why-havent-we-found-any-aliens-yet?utm_medium=email&utm_source=ten_tabs&utm_campaign=&position=1&category=fascinating_stories&scheduled_corpus_item_id=db23d2a0-c4be-4d47-bbfb-8e74c9c718e2&url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.theguardian.com%2Fnews%2F2026%2Faug%2F11%2Fthe-great-silence-why-havent-we-found-any-aliens-yet

The great silence: why haven’t we found any aliens yet?

https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20260709-how-to-future-proof-your-ears

'Once it's gone, it's gone': How to future-proof your hearing

Writing letters is a spiritual practice for our age of speed

by Amanda Leigh Lichtenstein, writer

Handwritten letters seem like a remnant of pre-online life, but they connect us to ourselves and each other like nothing else

Before a long trip, my father would often hand me a white envelope with my name written on the front. ‘Do not open it until you land,’ he’d insist. I’d get to my final destination and tear open the letter with a sense of urgency – to read those words written just for me. I loved his handwriting, how his careful letters in black ink grew bigger and sloppier, until the letter concluded with his classic signature, and sometimes a smiley face with glasses. I used to carry around these letters as amulets. They were lifelines when I felt lost and insecure.

I also wrote many letters as a traveller, full of questions and conundrums, revelations and requests, or just to say, ‘I’m thinking of you.’ Writing letters grounded me in unfamiliar places – with a pen and paper in hand, I paid closer attention to the details of a place – and it helped me feel a little less lonely on the road. Years later, I still have hundreds of letters from friends and family who wrote back to say: ‘I’m thinking of you, too.’

Like so many of us, I stopped writing letters as I spent more time online. But in the past few years, I’ve begun to see handwritten letters anew, as a form of resistance against the doom and disconnection of our digital lives. For me, the act of writing a heartfelt letter is a spiritual practice – it deepens our ability to connect with each other and with ourselves. And we’re all so hungry for connection.

I set out to see if I could rekindle a love of letter-writing. Last November, I kicked off a workshop at my local library by asking participants to share what excited them most about writing letters. One young woman, a recent high-school graduate who came to the workshop with her mother, confessed that she’d never written a letter before, but wanted to learn how, so that she could repair a strained friendship. Text messages just weren’t cutting it, she explained. She needed a way to go deeper, to communicate something from the heart.

Everyone in the room nodded in recognition. We talked about how, in the age of texting, tapping, swiping, scrolling and refreshing, many of us struggle with feelings of isolation and despair. Many people now spend so much time online that they’ve forgotten (or have never known) what it felt like to tend to relationships entirely offline. Letters offer a way back into that degree of care, asking the letter-writer to show up fully for another person in a way that seems increasingly rare.

Like many spiritual practices, writing a letter calls for an elevated level of presence and patience, from composing it, to sending it in the mail, to awaiting its arrival. Since many of us are accustomed to immediate gratification and lightning-fast responses, it can feel uncomfortable, maybe a little threatening, to slow down and focus undivided attention on what you’re communicating to someone in the way that a letter invites you to do. But the beauty of letter-writing is that what you say matters less than the act of writing itself – I believe the ritual is the remedy. Putting pen to paper plugs us into the present tense.

Letter-writing stands out for being an embodied practice, according to Emily Grayson, a psychotherapist who sometimes assigns letter-writing to her clients to help them understand themselves and their relationships. She notes that the entire process is at once tactile and relational: the writing implement, paper and envelope you use, the words you carefully choose, and the act of ‘keeping another in mind’ through direct address are all essential elements. The physicality of handwriting brings you back to your body and creates a sense of urgency around the message. In my experience, it can also help you downshift from anxious and reactive to calm and reflective. When I’m writing a letter, I notice how I slip into a more meditative state, making it easier for my mind to wander inward in search of the memories and messages I want to express.

Writing a letter can help clarify complex emotions and dynamics, even when it never gets sent

Something happens, Grayson observes, when people give themselves permission to show up fully through the act of writing a letter, allowing for the unexpected feelings and thoughts that may surface when given the space. ‘A letter is a private dialogue, but it also has this intention of reaching someone from a deeper part of ourselves,’ she told me. Ideally, it’s the first part of a longer conversation that deepens when the letter lands with the receiver.

What’s more, you can’t write a genuine letter without at least trying to imagine what the other person might be thinking or feeling. In this way, each letter is an act of empathic perspective-taking, one in which you clarify your own viewpoint while simultaneously spending time with the (imagined) experience of another. Keeping the other person in mind – without the expectation of an immediate reply or reaction – gives you a chance to sit with that person and the relationship in its complexity.

Grayson’s clients come to her with complicated relationship issues, including estrangement between parents and children. Sometimes writing a letter can help clarify complex emotions and dynamics, she says, even when it never gets sent. Making the contents of one’s mind visible through a letter can generate what she calls an ‘energetic release’ of feelings that find their forms and symbols. A letter ‘gets things moving’, she explains, allowing the writer ‘to soften enough to see new perspectives.’

If all writing is a form of prayer, then letter-writing is a form of devotion to the messiness of human relationships, all the idiosyncrasies and imperfections. I think about writing a letter as taking a ‘holy risk’, an idea borrowed from the mystic and philosopher Martin Buber. About a century ago, Buber wrote I and Thou (1923) as a response to what he saw as an abounding ‘existential mistrust’ in the postwar era. Buber believed that the divine lives in the relational ‘between’ of a ‘shared lifeworld’, in the words of the historian and biographer Paul Mendes-Flohr.

When I first read Buber in college, this idea of mutual coexistence struck me as poetic. The notion of spiritual interdependence – that the self doesn’t exist without the other, that human relationships make us whole – served as a guiding philosophical principle. But I’m realising now that Buber’s ideas also highlight what’s so powerful about letter-writing as a relational act, especially in a disembodied world where so many of us feel alone. The letter-writing process evokes what Buber calls ‘the mystery of reciprocity’, the ever-present possibility of turning fully toward one another and relating not as transactional objects but as complex humans with the spark of the divine in each of us.

Letter-writing has the power to help restore a way of relating that is generous, personal and spiritual

Every letter reaffirms a connection, no matter how fraught or fragile, by reorienting us to the other. By the time I seal the envelope, I already sense a change in myself: I’m a little less alone, a little less guarded, and a lot more open to finding words to share my story.

The philosopher Simone Weil wrote that ‘attention is the rarest and purest form of generosity.’ But we’re out of practice. As more of us attempt to wrest ourselves away from the addictive grip of our smartphones, letter-writing has the power to help restore a way of relating that is generous, personal and spiritual.

Perhaps it’s been a while since you’ve written a letter yourself – or, like the young woman at my workshop, you never have. A letter is all about slowing down to sit with yourself in the imagined presence of another. Whether you’re struck with a longing to share feelings, confess a truth, offer encouragement, say thanks, share personal news or apologise, the letter lends itself as a place to process, reflect, express and connect. The form itself offers some structural guidelines – begin with greetings and end with goodbyes – but you’re free to improvise what happens in the space between.

That being said, you could start by simply thinking of a loved one, conjuring them up in your mind. Turn toward that person and imagine what you want to tell them, what you want them to know about you in this moment, and what you might long to know about them. Then, grab a piece of paper and a pen, find a quiet place to sit, and listen for the messages within. When you’re ready, begin to write in the direction of your chosen person. A letter starts with a turning inward, but the felt presence of another orients you toward your audience of one. Ask a question. Share a story. Speak with curiosity. Imagine it’s just the two of you meeting in a private room, defying the boundaries of time and space.

A letter is a testament to the unique spirit of the individual who produces it. From the curves of our handwriting to the ways we sign off, traces of our essence linger in the letter. And when you receive a reply, holding it in your hands can make you feel as if the other person is right there with you. Knowing that someone took the time to sit with their thoughts about you for longer than an instant makes the ritual worth the effort.

It might be time for a letter-writing revival. There are already projects such as Letters Against Isolation, which connects young people with elders through letter-writing, and Postcrossing, a global postcard exchange programme. In the workshops I’ve led, attendees vary on what draws them to writing letters, from the tangibility of it to the anticipation of receiving a reply in the mail, but nearly all say it’s a satisfying way to get offline and connect with greater intention and meaning. As proof of our collective desire to stay in touch, the letter lingers on.

Amanda Leigh Lichtenstein is a writer and editor. Her work has appeared in Al-Jazeera, CNN, The World and The Poetry Foundation, among other publications. She lives in Skokie, Illinois.

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https://bigthink.com/mini-philosophy/3-ways-to-make-your-own-luck/

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