Loneliness Can Be Deadly for Elders; Friends Are the Antidote
Paula Span reports:
I’ve been talking, in this season of auld lang syne, with older people who have formed friendships late in life. Though they mourn their losses, they are grateful for the capacity to still find warmth, shared values and interests, understanding and trust from former strangers.
She discusses research on negative effects of loneliness and social isolation on older adults as their circle of acquaintances diminishes.
Why It’s So Hard to Train Someone to Make an Ethical Decision
One of the conundrums of ethical decision making is that many moral decisions that are quite straightforward — even easy — to resolve in a classroom or during training exercises seem far more difficult to successfully resolve when confronted during actual day-to-day decision making.
This article is aimed at people responsible for training employees in a business setting, but it raises points applicable to everyone.
And let’s not forget the benefit of wisdom that most of us of a certain age feel we have attained.
What to do when friends turn out to be bigots
This is an issue I’ve personally heard a lot about since the last U.S. election. So I was especially glad to see this:
And let’s get this out of the way upfront: Tolerance is about accepting as valid views that differ from yours. Bigotry is not valid. We do not have the moral luxury of practicing it, defending it, condoning it, normalizing it, or treating it as the aw-gee-bummer downside of a friend who is otherwise! so! great!
There are also some concrete suggestions here for how to deal with any such situations that may arise.
The Deceptions of Luck
My daughter was a competitive swimmer in her youth. When she was chosen as the first among her age group to move up to the next higher training group, her friends all said, “You’re so lucky.”
Of course her success had nothing to do with luck and everything to do with hard work.
This article considers the difference between luck and chance:
Chance, then, is the objective reality of random outcomes in the real world, while luck is a consequence of the subjective value you place on those random outcomes. Luck, we might say, is chance with a human face. Understanding this gives us a clearer view of reality, and a clearer view of reality means we can choose better courses of action.
© 2017 by Mary Daniels Brown
Retreading for Retirement 