How do we retire, grow older every year, and avoid living the stereotypical life of a senior citizen: decline, disengagement, and disappointment? How do we cope with common fears of old age: isolation, irrelevance, and invisibility? Author, researcher, and practitioner Ron Pevny has done decades of work to answer those questions and more in his book “Conscious Living, Conscious Aging.”
What if we could live our lives with purpose and continued growth all the way to the end? What if we could reconcile with our past – regret, resentment, grief, and emotional wounds – to create positive energy that moves us into productive, rewarding futures for the rest of our days?
Pevny will be addressing all these issues in an interactive presentation Tuesday, Feb. 11 from 2:30 to 4:30 p.m in the main dining room at the Good Samaritan Society- Estes Village, 1901 Ptarmigan Trail in Estes Park.
After reading the book, I met with Pevny at his home in Fort Collins on a cold, sunny day this month to interview him about his background and his message for elders. He spoke passionately about his work and about his hope for the world.
For over 40 years, Pevny has been a guide for people moving through life transitions, and he has evolved as a Life Transitions Retreat Leader, especially for people making the transition to elderhood.
His book gives seniors tools to create vibrant, productive lives with purpose and meaning. He has researched traditions, roles, and attitudes toward elders from cultures around the world over centuries, and he will be presenting his inspirational, practical guidelines to help Estes Park audience members create dynamic paths in elderhood. Pevny’s uplifting messages about creating meaning, purpose, and communities can be life-changing for individuals and for society as a whole.
“Just being more active is not enough,” Pevny says. “Just filling the hours is not enough.” Consider the ramifications of a generation like the Baby Boomers embracing a concern to create a better world now and for future generations through mentoring, activism, and creating thoughtful, productive communities that thrive together, not just in golf and pickleball.
As a 32-year-old, Pevny earned his masters degree in East West Counseling Psychology at the California Institute of Integral Studies in San Francisco where he weaved together the psychological approaches and disciplines of the Eastern and Western worlds to understand how people worldwide understand the journey of growth. He then spent over 40 years researching rites of passage in various cultures, especially indigenous ones.
Believing in the healing power of nature, Pevny led Outward Bound adventures, Sierra Club programs, and wilderness vision quests. He and a partner created the first contemporary vision quest organizations for non-native people. His calling was rite of passage work, “explicitly for people seeking help for that big passage from career-oriented adulthood to the next stage of elderhood.”
His book “Conscious Living, Conscious Aging” is practically a handbook on how to live a life of growth all the way to the end of our days. He is also the founder and director of the Center for Conscious Eldering, another great resource for seniors.
Cultures throughout the world, throughout history, have used rites of passage to mark their lives, but in the modern world, we have no rite of passage into elderhood. “A retirement party with a gold watch isn’t it,” says Pevny.
Beginning retirement with the negative views of being finished, washed up, and irrelevant are not conducive to happy, productive lives in the remaining years, which could be 25 years or more. Pevny says elders can become even more than what they were in their younger lives because now they have more time, fewer responsibilities/distractions, less stress, and more freedom.
Pevny’s topics for Estes Park will be about five themes that empower elders to live their best lives, directing people to rewarding years as significant voices in their communities. First, the “Power of Belief” is important to dispel negative thinking about aging and to create positive beliefs.
He points to studies that show how people with positive views of aging have increased their “healthy longevity,” not just longevity. Benefits in some studies have shown an added 7.5 years of healthy longevity and reduced dementia. The Power of Belief prompts people to move forward from the question of “What can I do” to “Who can I be in this new chapter of my life?”
Pevny’s methods include plumbing the past for insights to positive elderhood: considering our talents, previous roles we had in our lives, and things that brought us great joy. Believing in this dynamic age of elderhood, he says, “Ask ‘What gifts can I give now?’ Start every day asking, ‘How can I grow,’ and ‘How can I be of service?’”
The second theme Pevny has identified for meaningful years in elderhood is “Community.” We should not accept devolving into isolation. “We need ‘kindred spirits,’” he says. Elders should be involved in intergenerational projects with people of all ages.
To get involved in communities, Pevny first cites local action. “There must be some kids in Estes Park who could use a surrogate grandparent, someone to just hang out with if their own grandparents aren’t around,” he suggests. “To see elders who are making a difference communicates a powerful message to young people.”
For information on how to get involved in powerful communities, Pevny also recommends Elders Action Network. This organization presents opportunities for elders to become activists in social and environmental action projects around the country and the world.
Another resource is CoGenerate, a social-impact organization that works across generations for change. “Kids’ views of elders should be of elders living for something other than themselves,” Pevny says, because “if we are not striving for something bigger than ourselves, then we are just ego.”
The third theme in Pevny’s plan for elders to live and age consciously is called “Inner Work,” an effort to heal old scars from our lives. “Envisioning positive elderhood is difficult with emotional baggage like regret, resentment, unexpressed grief, and a lack of forgiveness for self and others,” Pevny explains. His book offers specific ideas to adequately do the Inner Work to free up energy for the future instead of being stuck in the past.
This work, as described in the book, seems to be a cleansing, transformative experience that would be a blessing in every life. “Our work is to…carry forward those qualities and gifts that will serve us well; and to discover and embody new gifts and potentials that expand our ability to find fulfillment, while serving the greater community in our new life roles,” Pevny writes.
The fourth theme is “Purpose,” which also happens to be “the number one common denominator in healthy longevity, a sense of purpose bigger than yourself,” he says. “Maybe the biggest thing we can do, that we know of, to help ward off Alzheimer’s is to have and to live a sense of purpose.”
Researchers don’t know exactly how that works, but “Consider how you feel on a day waking up adrift, with no direction: how do you feel?” Pevny asks. “Now consider a day when you wake up with a purpose, with something deeply meaningful to do: how do you feel? More energetic! Focused! Totally different!” So a quest for purpose in elderhood is vital.
“Spirituality” is Pevny’s fifth theme, but certainly not the least important. His definition for spirituality is very broad and subjective. “If you don’t believe in spirit or God, we all have a deep inner-knowing that is our most authentic voice that knows what is right for us,” according to Pevny, and connecting to our deep inner knowing is impactful, especially late in life.
“If your spirituality is important to you, doing all you can to deepen that spirituality in your later years is the thing that’s going to be what opens you up to that voice in you that knows how best you can thrive, heal, and make a difference in the world,” according to Pevny. “That voice is the source of our resilience.” Certainly resilience serves us well all through our lives, but especially in elderhood as we do the work to shed our old skin and embrace a new life to benefit ourselves, our community, and the future of the world.
But what about people who are not yet at this crossroads of elderhood? What can they do now? Younger people can read Pevny’s book and attend his presentation to better understand the future role they will hopefully have as an elder some day.
Years before accepting that role, people should be conscious of their own gifts, talents, and contributions right now. Young adults and even children should consider the roles of elders in their own community and recognize the value of those elders, imagining roles that the younger person may some day assume. Younger generations should be proactive about life choices for healthy aging that will make them more able to be productive, mobile, and effective throughout elderhood.
It is an uphill battle to change society’s myths about aging, but when young people see elders with purpose in vibrant communities, those experiences will create new perspectives and positive expectations for their own elderhood some day.
On Feb. 11, Pevny’s audience in Estes Park will see him demonstrating the life he envisions for all of us: continuing to grow as he articulates his purpose in service to others, “holding up elderhood as a meaningful role.”
Copies of “Conscious Living, Conscious Aging” are available at the Estes Valley Library and can be ordered locally through Macdonald Book Shop. Copies will also be available for sale at the event on Tuesday, Feb, 11, 2025, from 2:30 to 4:30 at Good Samaritan Society, 1901 Ptarmigan Trail, Estes Park.
The author talk and book signing is free and open to the public. To RSVP for the event, please click here.
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