Seniors and Transition

     At our seniors centre we have a weekly discussion group focused on Global Issues.We discuss or will discuss waste management (especially plastic in the world that never disappears) , global warming, the distribution of nuclear arms, artificial intelligence, the rise of hunger and the population, desertification and the water shortage. We begin with these discussions from two to four in the afternoon but soon lapse into interactions that drift into our past. With minor exception we are all in our near, or our early eighties so the past is important to us since it was then, when we really mattered.
     We have two formerly professors in our midst, two former doctors of medicine ,an  ex federal civil servant , an ex naval officer and a former ballistic and finger print expert. We seem unable to avoid the period before we were old, when we really mattered. Such is struggling with transition. Two of us are legally blind. Two of us are legally lame, one on a walker, one on a scooter. Most of us are on anticoagulants because I see the hemorrhagic patches on the arms and dorsum of the hands.
     Tomorrow I'm going to a workshop on Transitions. Most will probably be younger. The thrust will be transitioning to newer pathways in life and how to cope with the newer pathways and encountering the fork in the road and decisions about which pathway to take. Our global issues group repeatedly try to take a new road in the forest but, as you can see, retreat to the old pathway we trod, recalling matters which mattered  when we mattered.
      Plus ca change, plus c'est la meme chose.