TEDxWomen 2011
Jane Fonda: Life's third act
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Within this generation, an extra 30 years have been added to our life expectancy -- and these years aren't just a footnote. Jane Fonda asks how we can re-imagine this new phase of our lives.
Jane Fonda - Actor and activist
Jane Fonda has had three extraordinary careers (so far): Oscar-winning actor, fitness guru, impassioned activist. Full bio
Jane Fonda has had three extraordinary careers (so far): Oscar-winning actor, fitness guru, impassioned activist. Full bio
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There have been many revolutions
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over the last century,
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but perhaps none as significant
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as the longevity revolution.
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We are living on average today
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34 years longer than our great-grandparents did.
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Think about that.
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That's an entire second adult lifetime
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that's been added to our lifespan.
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And yet, for the most part,
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our culture has not come to terms with what this means.
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We're still living with the old paradigm
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of age as an arch.
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That's the metaphor, the old metaphor.
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You're born, you peak at midlife
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and decline into decrepitude.
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(Laughter)
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Age as pathology.
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But many people today --
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philosophers, artists, doctors, scientists --
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are taking a new look at what I call the third act,
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the last three decades of life.
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They realize that this is actually a developmental stage of life
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with its own significance --
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as different from midlife
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as adolescence is from childhood.
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And they are asking -- we should all be asking --
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how do we use this time?
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How do we live it successfully?
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What is the appropriate new metaphor
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for aging?
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I've spent the last year researching and writing about this subject.
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And I have come to find
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that a more appropriate metaphor for aging
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is a staircase --
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the upward ascension of the human spirit,
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bringing us into wisdom, wholeness
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and authenticity.
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Age not at all as pathology;
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age as potential.
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And guess what?
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This potential is not for the lucky few.
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It turns out,
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most people over 50
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feel better, are less stressed,
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are less hostile, less anxious.
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We tend to see commonalities
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more than differences.
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Some of the studies even say
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we're happier.
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This is not what I expected, trust me.
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I come from a long line of depressives.
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As I was approaching my late 40s,
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when I would wake up in the morning
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my first six thoughts would all be negative.
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And I got scared.
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I thought, oh my gosh.
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I'm going to become a crotchety old lady.
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But now that I am actually smack-dab in the middle of my own third act,
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I realize I've never been happier.
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I have such a powerful feeling of well-being.
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And I've discovered
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that when you're inside oldness,
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as opposed to looking at it from the outside,
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fear subsides.
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You realize, you're still yourself --
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maybe even more so.
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Picasso once said, "It takes a long time to become young."
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(Laughter)
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I don't want to romanticize aging.
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Obviously, there's no guarantee
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that it can be a time of fruition and growth.
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Some of it is a matter of luck.
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Some of it, obviously, is genetic.
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One third of it, in fact, is genetic.
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And there isn't much we can do about that.
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But that means that two-thirds
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of how well we do in the third act,
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we can do something about.
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We're going to discuss what we can do
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to make these added years really successful
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and use them to make a difference.
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Now let me say something about the staircase,
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which may seem like an odd metaphor for seniors
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given the fact that many seniors are challenged by stairs.
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(Laughter)
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Myself included.
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As you may know,
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the entire world operates on a universal law:
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entropy, the second law of thermodynamics.
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Entropy means that everything in the world, everything,
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is in a state of decline and decay,
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the arch.
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There's only one exception to this universal law,
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and that is the human spirit,
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which can continue to evolve upwards --
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the staircase --
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bringing us into wholeness,
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authenticity and wisdom.
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And here's an example of what I mean.
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This upward ascension
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can happen even in the face of extreme physical challenges.
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About three years ago,
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I read an article in the New York Times.
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It was about a man named Neil Selinger --
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57 years old, a retired lawyer --
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who had joined the writers group at Sarah Lawrence
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where he found his writer's voice.
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Two years later,
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he was diagnosed with ALS, commonly known as Lou Gehrig's disease.
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It's a terrible disease. It's fatal.
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It wastes the body, but the mind remains intact.
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In this article, Mr. Selinger wrote the following
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to describe what was happening to him.
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And I quote,
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"As my muscles weakened,
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my writing became stronger.
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As I slowly lost my speech,
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I gained my voice.
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As I diminished, I grew.
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As I lost so much,
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I finally started to find myself."
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Neil Selinger, to me,
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is the embodiment of mounting the staircase
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in his third act.
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Now we're all born with spirit, all of us,
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but sometimes it gets tamped down
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beneath the challenges of life,
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violence, abuse, neglect.
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Perhaps our parents suffered from depression.
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Perhaps they weren't able to love us
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beyond how we performed in the world.
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Perhaps we still suffer
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from a psychic pain, a wound.
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Perhaps we feel that many of our relationships have not had closure.
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And so we can feel unfinished.
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Perhaps the task of the third act
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is to finish up the task of finishing ourselves.
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For me, it began as I was approaching my third act,
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my 60th birthday.
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How was I supposed to live it?
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What was I supposed to accomplish in this final act?
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And I realized that, in order to know where I was going,
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I had to know where I'd been.
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And so I went back
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and I studied my first two acts,
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trying to see who I was then,
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who I really was --
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not who my parents or other people told me I was,
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or treated me like I was.
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But who was I? Who were my parents --
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not as parents, but as people?
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Who were my grandparents?
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How did they treat my parents?
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These kinds of things.
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I discovered a couple of years later
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that this process that I had gone through
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is called by psychologists
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"doing a life review."
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And they say it can give new significance
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and clarity and meaning
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to a person's life.
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You may discover, as I did,
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that a lot of things that you used to think were your fault,
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a lot of things you used to think about yourself,
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really had nothing to do with you.
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It wasn't your fault; you're just fine.
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And you're able to go back
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and forgive them
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and forgive yourself.
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You're able to free yourself
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from your past.
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You can work to change
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your relationship to your past.
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Now while I was writing about this,
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I came upon a book called "Man's Search for Meaning"
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by Viktor Frankl.
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Viktor Frankl was a German psychiatrist
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who'd spent five years in a Nazi concentration camp.
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And he wrote that, while he was in the camp,
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he could tell, should they ever be released,
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which of the people would be okay
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and which would not.
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And he wrote this:
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"Everything you have in life can be taken from you
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except one thing,
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your freedom to choose
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how you will respond
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to the situation.
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This is what determines
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the quality of the life we've lived --
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not whether we've been rich or poor,
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famous or unknown,
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healthy or suffering.
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What determines our quality of life
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is how we relate to these realities,
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what kind of meaning we assign them,
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what kind of attitude we cling to about them,
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what state of mind we allow them to trigger."
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Perhaps the central purpose of the third act
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is to go back and to try, if appropriate,
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to change our relationship
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to the past.
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It turns out that cognitive research shows
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when we are able to do this,
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it manifests neurologically --
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neural pathways are created in the brain.
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You see, if you have, over time,
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reacted negatively to past events and people,
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neural pathways are laid down
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by chemical and electrical signals that are sent through the brain.
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And over time, these neural pathways become hardwired,
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they become the norm --
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even if it's bad for us
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because it causes us stress and anxiety.
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If however,
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we can go back and alter our relationship,
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re-vision our relationship
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to past people and events,
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neural pathways can change.
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And if we can maintain
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the more positive feelings about the past,
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that becomes the new norm.
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It's like resetting a thermostat.
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It's not having experiences
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that make us wise,
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it's reflecting on the experiences that we've had
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that makes us wise --
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and that helps us become whole,
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brings wisdom and authenticity.
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It helps us become what we might have been.
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Women start off whole, don't we?
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I mean, as girls, we start off feisty -- "Yeah, who says?"
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We have agency.
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We are the subjects of our own lives.
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But very often,
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many, if not most of us, when we hit puberty,
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we start worrying about fitting in and being popular.
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And we become the subjects and objects of other people's lives.
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But now, in our third acts,
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it may be possible
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for us to circle back to where we started
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and know it for the first time.
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And if we can do that,
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it will not just be for ourselves.
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Older women
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are the largest demographic in the world.
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If we can go back and redefine ourselves
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and become whole,
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this will create a cultural shift in the world,
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and it will give an example to younger generations
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so that they can reconceive their own lifespan.
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Thank you very much.
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(Applause)
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ABOUT THE SPEAKER
Jane Fonda - Actor and activistJane Fonda has had three extraordinary careers (so far): Oscar-winning actor, fitness guru, impassioned activist.
Why you should listen
Jane Fonda is an actor, author, producer and activist supporting environmental issues, peace and female empowerment. She founded the Georgia Campaign for Adolescent Pregnancy Prevention, and established the Jane Fonda Center for Adolescent Reproductive Health at Emory. She cofounded the Women’s Media Center, and sits on the board of V-Day, a global effort to stop violence against women and girls.
Fonda's remarkable screen and stage career includes two Best Actress Oscars, an Emmy, a Tony Award nomination and an Honorary Palme d’Or from the Cannes Film Festival. Offstage, she revolutionized the fitness industry in the 1980s with Jane Fonda’s Workout — the all-time top-grossing home video. She has written a best-selling memoir, My Life So Far, and Prime Time, a comprehensive guide to living life to the fullest.
Jane Fonda | Speaker | TED.com