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You
are here: Is September University for You?
Much has been written about the seasons of life during the past half-century. But nothing gets to the heart of the matter about being a senior citizen in today's society better than this assertion in Ronald Manheimer's book, A Map to the End of Time: "Old age is a conspiracy into which we are reluctantly drawn. The only way to contend with the glance of others and the threatening image we behold in the mirror is to refuse to withdraw from society, disclaim the role of the old-timer, and avoid slipping into the self-deception that you are as others see you, a repository of memory, living primarily in the past, a passive agent incapable of further willful action and decisions."
The September of life for many of us represents our first real opportunity to embrace large pools of solitude. Once characterized as a monkish virtue by the Scottish philosopher David Hume, solitude is certainly rare enough today to qualify as such. To experience solitude in the twenty-first century more often than not requires a deliberate attempt to override time, place, and our ever-changing mainstream media. It means turning off the telephone, computer, TV, radio, CD player, and our personal digital assistants and leaving them off until we can once again hear the echoes and reverberations of our own thoughts. Most of human thought occurs beneath consciousness, so it shouldn't be surprising that long periods of silence must produce intermittent floods of thoughtful contemplation. Insightful revelation can emerge if simply given a chance and the solitude to develop.
Throughout our lives we dream and search, reach and get. We become disillusioned or bored, and then we rethink and start the process over again. Later in life, most of the things that have occupied our lives as priorities begin to seem more and more like trivialities. We come to realize that what is truly important is that part of us which will linger after we are gone, whether it exists in the memories of others or through individual deeds that will outlive us.
The September of life is all about perspective. The possibility of sifting wisdom from our lived experience is now available to us, if we're willing to accept the challenge and make a commitment to learning and reflection. September University is a state of mind: it has no physical address, no faculty, and no staff. Instead, September University is a concept for a new way of aging, with the aim of erasing the notion of retirement from our vocabulary. It's a vision of retirement that replaces a time devoted to doing very little with a time of reflection, when people who've entered the September of life have the opportunity to make their greatest contribution to the generations to follow.
A September University frame of mind means looking forward to sifting through a half-century or more of experience, sorting those things that are truly important from those that aren't, and finding ways to pass on that wisdom.
Enrollment in September University is a last chance for course correction, a final opportunity to experience a life that truly matters as a human being. We should expunge the word retirement from common parlance and replace it with R and R: reflection and reflexivity. Imagine what a different perspective advanced years would bring to society if, instead of saying we were looking forward to retirement, we said we were eager to begin our years of reflection, eager to sort the truth of our experience from society's fictions. Reflexivity is a turning back into one's experience to retake bearings and reexamine one's coordinates. If the autumn years begin at 50, real education begins in September.
Those of us who are adults, especially those of us who have entered the September of life and beyond, have one last chance to matter as human beings by clearly demonstrating the kind of interest in life that makes younger generations think we have something going for us after all. We can show respect and enthusiasm toward the properties of time, place, and change. We can use the property of regret with imagination, and use our search for knowledge to resolve our despair and anxiety in ways that move us toward authenticity and generativity. There simply is no better way to deal with existential angst than through a life-affirming willingness to look directly into the abyss. By living our lives as if we are really interested in them, we can be assured of the rapture of maturity and leave the world a better place in the process.
Charles D. Hayes is a lifelong learning advocate, a self-taught philosopher, and an author and publisher. At age 17, he dropped out of high school to join the U.S. Marines. After four years of duty he became a police officer in Dallas, Texas, and later he moved to Alaska, where he has worked for more than 20 years in the oil industry. In 1987 Hayes founded Autodidactic Press, committed to lifelong learning as the lifeblood of democracy and the key to living life to its fullest. He can be reached at autpress@alaska.net. Charles D. Hayes is author of The Rapture of Maturity: A Legacy of Lifelong Learning, and other books. For more information, visit www.septemberuniversity.org .
©Charles D. Hayes
Posted with permission September 2004
by New Horizons for Learning
http://www.newhorizons.org
info@newhorizons.orgFor permission to redistribute, please contact the author.
