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There have been many revolutions
over the last century,

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but perhaps none as significant
as the longevity revolution.

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We are living on average
today 34 years longer

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than our great-grandparents did --
think about that.

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That's an entire second adult lifetime

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that's been added to our lifespan.

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And yet, for the most part,

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our culture has not come to terms
with what this means.

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We're still living with the old paradigm

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of age as an arch.

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That's the metaphor, the old metaphor.

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You're born, you peak at midlife

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and decline into decrepitude.

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(Laughter)

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Age as pathology.

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But many people today -- philosophers,
artists, doctors, scientists --

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are taking a new look
at what I call "the third act" --

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the last three decades of life.

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They realize that this is actually
a developmental stage of life

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with its own significance,

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as different from midlife
as adolescence is from childhood.

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And they are asking --
we should all be asking:

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How do we use this time?

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How do we live it successfully?

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What is the appropriate
new metaphor for aging?

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I've spent the last year researching
and writing a book called Prime time

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about this subject.

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And I have come to find
that a more appropriate metaphor for aging

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is a staircase --

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the upward ascension of the human spirit,

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bringing us into wisdom,
wholeness, and authenticity.

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Age not at all as pathology.

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Age as potential.

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And guess what?

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This potential is not for the lucky few.

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It turns out, most people over 50

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feel better, are less stressed,
less hostile, less anxious.

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We tend to see commonalities
more than differences.

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Some of the studies even say
we're happier.

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(Laughter)

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This is not what I expected, trust me.

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I come from a long line of depressives.

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As I was approaching my late 40s,

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when I would wake up in the morning,

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my first six thoughts
would all be negative.

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And I got scared.

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I thought, "Oh my gosh.
I'm going to become a crotchety old lady."

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But now that I am actually smack-dab
in the middle of my own third act,

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I realize I've never been happier.

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I have such a powerful
feeling of well-being.

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And I've discovered

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that when you're inside oldness,

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as opposed to looking
at it from the outside,

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fear subsides.

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You realize you're still yourself --

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maybe even more so.

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Picasso once said, "It takes
a long time to become young."

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(Laughter)

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I don't want to romanticize aging.

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Obviously, there's no guarantee

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that it can be a time
of fruition and growth.

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Some of it is a matter of luck.

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Some of it, obviously, is genetic.

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One third of it, in fact, is genetic.

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And there isn't much we can do about that.

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But that means that two-thirds
of how well we do in the third act,

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we can do something about.

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This session is called "ReBirth,"

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I love that, aging as rebirth.
Think about that.

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We're going to discuss what we can do

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to make these added years
really successful,

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and use them to make a difference.

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Now, let me say something
about the staircase,

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which may seem like an odd
metaphor for seniors,

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given the fact that many seniors
are challenged by stairs.

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(Laughter)

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Myself included.

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As you may know, the entire world
operates on a universal law:

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entropy, the second law of thermodynamics.

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Entropy means that everything
in the world -- everything --

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is in a state of decline and decay --

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the arch.

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There's only one exception
to this universal law,

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and that is the human spirit,

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which can continue to evolve
upwards, the staircase,

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bringing us into wholeness,
authenticity, and wisdom.

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And here's an example of what I mean.

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This upward ascension

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can happen even in the face
of extreme physical challenges.

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About three years ago,
I read an article in the New York Times.

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It was about a man named Neil Selinger --

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57 years old, a retired lawyer,

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who had joined the writers'
group at Sarah Lawrence,

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where he found his writer's voice.

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Two years later,

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he was diagnosed with ALS,
commonly known as Lou Gehrig's disease.

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It's a terrible disease. It's fatal.

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It wastes the body,
but the mind remains intact.

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In this article,
Mr. Selinger wrote the following

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to describe what was happening to him.

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And I quote:

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"As my muscles weakened,

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my writing became stronger.

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As I slowly lost my speech,

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I gained my voice.

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As I diminished, I grew.

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As I lost so much,

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I finally started to find myself."

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Neil Selinger, to me,

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is the embodiment
of mounting the staircase

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in his third act.

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Now we're all born with spirit, all of us,

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but sometimes it gets tamped down
beneath the challenges of life,

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violence, abuse, neglect.

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Perhaps our parents
suffered from depression.

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Perhaps they weren't able to love us
beyond how we performed in the world.

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Perhaps we still suffer
from a psychic pain, a wound.

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Perhaps we feel
that many of our relationships

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have not had closure.

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And so we can feel unfinished.

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Perhaps the task of the third act

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is to finish up the task
of finishing ourselves.

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For me, it began as I was approaching
my third act, my 60th birthday.

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I realized third acts are important.

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This was my last act.

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How was I supposed to live it?

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What was I supposed to accomplish
in this final act?

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And I realized that,
in order to know where I was going,

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I had to know where I'd been.

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And so I went back
and I studied my first two acts,

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trying to see who I was then,

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who I really was, not who my parents
or other people told me I was,

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or treated me like I was.

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But who was I?

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Who were my parents --
not as parents, but as people?

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Who were my grandparents?

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How did they treat my parents?

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These kinds of things.

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I discovered, a couple of years later,

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that this process that I had gone through

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is called by psychologists
"doing a life review."

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And they say it can give new significance
and clarity and meaning

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to a person's life.

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You may discover, as I did,

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that a lot of things
that you used to think were your fault,

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a lot of things you used
to think about yourself,

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really had nothing to do with you.

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It wasn't your fault; you're just fine.

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And you're able to go back
and forgive them.

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And forgive yourself.

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You're able to free yourself

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from your past.

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You can work to change
your relationship to your past.

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Now while I was writing about this,

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I came upon a book called
"Man's Search for Meaning"

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by Viktor Frankl.

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Viktor Frankl was a German psychiatrist

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who'd spent five years
in a Nazi concentration camp.

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And he wrote that,
while he was in the camp,

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he could tell, should
they ever be released,

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which of the people would be OK,
and which would not.

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And he wrote this:

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"Everything you have in life
can be taken from you

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except one thing:

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your freedom to choose
how you will respond to the situation.

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This is what determines
the quality of the life we've lived --

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not whether we've been rich or poor,

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famous or unknown,

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healthy or suffering.

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What determines our quality of life
is how we relate to these realities,

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what kind of meaning we assign them,

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what kind of attitude
we cling to about them,

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what state of mind
we allow them to trigger."

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Perhaps the central purpose
of the third act

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is to go back and to try, if appropriate,

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to change our relationship to the past.

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It turns out that cognitive research shows

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when we are able to do this,

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it manifests neurologically --

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neural pathways are created in the brain.

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You see, if you have, over time,

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reacted negatively
to past events and people,

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neural pathways are laid down

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by chemical and electrical signals
that are sent through the brain.

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And over time, these neural pathways
become hardwired.

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They become the norm --
even if it's bad for us,

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because it causes us stress and anxiety.

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If, however,

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we can go back and alter our relationship,

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re-vision our relationship
to past people and events,

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neural pathways can change.

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And if we can maintain
the more positive feelings

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about the past,

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that becomes the new norm.

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It's like resetting a thermostat.

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It's not having experiences

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that makes us wise.

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It's reflecting on the experiences
that we've had that makes us wise

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and that helps us become whole,

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brings wisdom and authenticity.

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It helps us become
what we might have been.

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Women start off whole, don't we?

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I mean, as girls, we're feisty --
"Yeah? Who says?"

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(Laughter)

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We have agency.

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We are the subjects of our own lives.

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But very often,

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many, if not most of us,
when we hit puberty,

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we start worrying
about fitting in and being popular.

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And we become the subjects
and objects of other people's lives.

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But now, in our third acts,

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it may be possible for us
to circle back to where we started,

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and know it for the first time.

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And if we can do that,

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it will not just be for ourselves.

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Older women are the largest
demographic in the world.

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If we can go back and redefine ourselves

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and become whole,

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this will create
a cultural shift in the world,

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and it will give an example
to younger generations

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so that they can reconceive
their own lifespan.

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Thank you very much.

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(Applause)