Tuesday, September 22, 2009

"The Wisdom Keepers"



Margaret Atwood is a well-known author, and she has an article in the fall AARP magazine called "The Pressure to be Wise." She was asked to participate in a video series called "The Wisdom Keepers" which interviews older people of accomplishment and is intended to be motivational to young folks. In this article, Margaret Atwood jokes about declaring herself a "stupidity keeper" and opting out of the project. I think she is saying, age plus experience doesn't guarantee wisdom. So what is wisdom anyway? I suppose if you are lucky to be wise in old age, you would also have the wisdom to share it without being a royal pain to the younger generation.

When I was writing this post last night, by coincidence Margaret Atwood was featured on a PBS evening news segment. She's probably best known for her spooky book "The Handmaiden's Tale" that was later made into a movie. Her new novel is called "The Year of the Flood" about a religion (God's Gardeners) devoted to preserving all plant and animal life with some weird consequences.

When I turned 50, I resisted signing up with the annoying AARP organization, but John joined immediately upon turing the half century mark. Now I like reading most of their magazine. If you are not in the AARP demographic yet, here's a link to the Atwood article:

No comments:

Post a Comment