In the movie Ikiru, directed by Akira Kurosawa, an aging bureaucrat discovers he has stomach cancer and is propelled into an existential crisis by the realization that he has wasted his life engaged in a meaningless job.  This revelation opens him up, however, to a constructive act:  he sets to work transforming a stagnant pond...Read More

During the Middle Ages, a popular image of the stages of life in Roman Catholicism was of a mandala with Christ in the center and the different ages of man represented as spokes around that hub (see my post on The Stages of Life and the Liturgy of the Hours).  With the dawning of the...Read More

Charlotte Bühler (1893-1975), was a German developmental psychologist who was a founder of humanistic psychology, but whose views on the human life cycle are less well known compared to the theories of Piaget, Freud, and Erikson.  She nonetheless made a unique contribution to the study of the life stages with her emphasis on how the...Read More

To watch a great film is to be fed aesthetically, emotionally, and intellectually.  But there are certain great films that do more:  they serve as time machines, bringing us backwards or forwards into stages of life that we have already traveled or will eventually and hopefully travel in the future.  I call these ”stages of...Read More

  Here’s a little multiple choice quiz: When we come to the end of life, what is it that we are most likely to regret?  Is it: a) ”I wish that I had spent more time answering my email” b). ”I wish I had spent more time texting.” c) ”I wish I had spent more time...Read More