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•TED TALKS•, Jane Fonda: Life's third act

Jane Fonda: Life's third act

There have been many revolutions over the last century, but perhaps none as significant as the longevity revolution.

We are living on average today 34 years longer than our great-grandparents did. Think about that. That's an entire second adult lifetime that's been added to our lifespan. And yet, for the most part, our culture has not come to terms with what this means. We're still living with the old paradigm of age as an arch. That's the metaphor, the old metaphor. You're born, you peak at midlife and decline into decrepitude. (Laughter) Age as pathology. But many people today -- philosophers, artists, doctors, scientists -- are taking a new look at what I call the third act, the last three decades of life.

They realize that this is actually a developmental stage of life with its own significance -- as different from midlife as adolescence is from childhood. And they are asking -- we should all be asking -- how do we use this time? How do we live it successfully? What is the appropriate new metaphor for aging? I've spent the last year researching and writing about this subject.

And I have come to find that a more appropriate metaphor for aging is a staircase -- the upward ascension of the human spirit, bringing us into wisdom, wholeness and authenticity. Age not at all as pathology; age as potential. And guess what? This potential is not for the lucky few. It turns out, most people over 50 feel better, are less stressed, are less hostile, less anxious. We tend to see commonalities more than differences. Some of the studies even say we're happier. This is not what I expected, trust me.

I come from a long line of depressives. As I was approaching my late 40s, when I would wake up in the morning my first six thoughts would all be negative. And I got scared. I thought, oh my gosh. I'm going to become a crotchety old lady. But now that I am actually smack-dab in the middle of my own third act, I realize I've never been happier. I have such a powerful feeling of well-being. And I've discovered that when you're inside oldness, as opposed to looking at it from the outside, fear subsides. You realize, you're still yourself -- maybe even more so. Picasso once said, "It takes a long time to become young. (Laughter)

I don't want to romanticize aging.

Obviously, there's no guarantee that it can be a time of fruition and growth. Some of it is a matter of luck. Some of it, obviously, is genetic. One third of it, in fact, is genetic. And there isn't much we can do about that. But that means that two-thirds of how well we do in the third act, we can do something about. We're going to discuss what we can do to make these added years really successful and use them to make a difference. Now let me say something about the staircase, which may seem like an odd metaphor for seniors given the fact that many seniors are challenged by stairs.

(Laughter) Myself included. As you may know, the entire world operates on a universal law: entropy, the second law of thermodynamics. Entropy means that everything in the world, everything, is in a state of decline and decay, the arch. There's only one exception to this universal law, and that is the human spirit, which can continue to evolve upwards -- the staircase -- bringing us into wholeness, authenticity and wisdom. And here's an example of what I mean.

This upward ascension can happen even in the face of extreme physical challenges. About three years ago, I read an article in the New York Times. It was about a man named Neil Selinger -- 57 years old, a retired lawyer -- who had joined the writers group at Sarah Lawrence where he found his writer's voice. Two years later, he was diagnosed with ALS, commonly known as Lou Gehrig's disease. It's a terrible disease. It's fatal. It wastes the body, but the mind remains intact. In this article, Mr. Selinger wrote the following to describe what was happening to him. And I quote, "As my muscles weakened, my writing became stronger. As I slowly lost my speech, I gained my voice. As I diminished, I grew. As I lost so much, I finally started to find myself. " Neil Selinger, to me, is the embodiment of mounting the staircase in his third act. Now we're all born with spirit, all of us, but sometimes it gets tamped down beneath the challenges of life, violence, abuse, neglect.

Perhaps our parents suffered from depression.Perhaps they weren't able to love us beyond how we performed in the world. Perhaps we still suffer from a psychic pain, a wound. Perhaps we feel that many of our relationships have not had closure. And so we can feel unfinished. Perhaps the task of the third act is to finish up the task of finishing ourselves. For me, it began as I was approaching my third act, my 60th birthday.

How was I supposed to live it? What was I supposed to accomplish in this final act? And I realized that, in order to know where I was going, I had to know where I'd been. And so I went back and I studied my first two acts, trying to see who I was then, who I really was -- not who my parents or other people told me I was, or treated me like I was. But who was I? Who were my parents -- not as parents, but as people? Who were my grandparents? How did they treat my parents? These kinds of things. I discovered a couple of years later that this process that I had gone through is called by psychologists "doing a life review.

" And they say it can give new significance and clarity and meaning to a person's life. You may discover, as I did, that a lot of things that you used to think were your fault, a lot of things you used to think about yourself, really had nothing to do with you. It wasn't your fault; you're just fine. And you're able to go back and forgive them and forgive yourself. You're able to free yourself from your past. You can work to change your relationship to your past. Now while I was writing about this, I came upon a book called "Man's Search for Meaning"by Viktor Frankl.

Viktor Frankl was a German psychiatrist who'd spent five years in a Nazi concentration camp. And he wrote that, while he was in the camp, he could tell, should they ever be released, which of the people would be okay and which would not. And he wrote this: "Everything you have in life can be taken from you except one thing, your freedom to choose how you will respond to the situation. This is what determines the quality of the life we've lived -- not whether we've been rich or poor, famous or unknown, healthy or suffering.What determines our quality of life is how we relate to these realities, what kind of meaning we assign them, what kind of attitude we cling to about them, what state of mind we allow them to trigger. Perhaps the central purpose of the third act is to go back and to try, if appropriate, to change our relationship to the past.

It turns out that cognitive research shows when we are able to do this, it manifests neurologically -- neural pathways are created in the brain. You see, if you have, over time, reacted negatively to past events and people, neural pathways are laid down by chemical and electrical signals that are sent through the brain. And over time, these neural pathways become hardwired, they become the norm -- even if it's bad for us because it causes us stress and anxiety. If however, we can go back and alter our relationship, re-vision our relationship to past people and events, neural pathways can change.

And if we can maintain the more positive feelings about the past, that becomes the new norm. It's like resetting a thermostat. It's not having experiences that make us wise, it's reflecting on the experiences that we've had that makes us wise -- and that helps us become whole, brings wisdom and authenticity. It helps us become what we might have been. Women start off whole, don't we?

I mean, as girls, we start off feisty -- "Yeah, who says? "We have agency. We are the subjects of our own lives. But very often, many, if not most of us, when we hit puberty, we start worrying about fitting in and being popular. And we become the subjects and objects of other people's lives. But now, in our third acts, it may be possible for us to circle back to where we started and know it for the first time. And if we can do that, it will not just be for ourselves. Older women are the largest demographic in the world. If we can go back and redefine ourselves and become whole, this will create a cultural shift in the world, and it will give an example to younger generations so that they can reconceive their own lifespan. Thank you very much.

(Applause)

Jane Fonda: Life's third act Jane Fonda: Der dritte Akt des Lebens Jane Fonda: Fonda: Η τρίτη πράξη της ζωής Jane Fonda: Life's third act Jane Fonda: El tercer acto de la vida Jane Fonda : Le troisième acte de la vie Jane Fonda: Il terzo atto della vita ジェーン・フォンダ人生の第3幕 Jane Fonda: Trzeci akt życia Jane Fonda: O terceiro acto da vida Джейн Фонда: Третий акт жизни Jane Fonda: Hayatın üçüncü perdesi Джейн Фонда: Третій акт життя 简·方达：人生的第三幕 簡·方達：人生的第三幕

There have been many revolutions over the last century, but perhaps none as significant as the longevity revolution. Im letzten Jahrhundert gab es viele Revolutionen, aber vielleicht keine so bedeutend wie die Langlebigkeitsrevolution.

We are living on average today 34 years longer than our great-grandparents did. Wir leben heute im Durchschnitt 34 Jahre länger als unsere Urgroßeltern. Think about that. Denk darüber nach. That’s an entire second adult lifetime that’s been added to our lifespan. Das ist ein ganzes zweites Erwachsenenleben, das zu unserer Lebensspanne hinzugefügt wurde. C'est toute une deuxième vie d'adulte qui a été ajoutée à notre durée de vie. And yet, for the most part, our culture has not come to terms with what this means. Und doch hat sich unsere Kultur größtenteils nicht damit abgefunden, was dies bedeutet. Pourtant, dans l'ensemble, notre culture n'a pas compris ce que cela signifie. We’re still living with the old paradigm of age as an arch. Wir leben immer noch mit dem alten Paradigma des Alters als Bogen. Nous vivons toujours avec l'ancien paradigme de l'âge en tant qu'arche. That’s the metaphor, the old metaphor. Das ist die Metapher, die alte Metapher. You’re born, you peak at midlife and decline into decrepitude. Sie werden geboren, erreichen ihren Höhepunkt in der Lebensmitte und verfallen in Altersschwäche. (Laughter) Age as pathology. (Gelächter) Alter als Pathologie. (笑) 病理としての年齢。 But many people today -- philosophers, artists, doctors, scientists -- are taking a new look at what I call the third act, the last three decades of life. Aber viele Menschen heute – Philosophen, Künstler, Ärzte, Wissenschaftler – werfen einen neuen Blick auf das, was ich den dritten Akt nenne, die letzten drei Jahrzehnte des Lebens. Mais aujourd'hui, de nombreuses personnes - philosophes, artistes, médecins, scientifiques - jettent un nouveau regard sur ce que j'appelle le troisième acte, c'est-à-dire les trois dernières décennies de la vie.

They realize that this is actually a developmental stage of life with its own significance -- as different from midlife as adolescence is from childhood. Sie erkennen, dass dies eigentlich eine Entwicklungsphase des Lebens mit eigener Bedeutung ist – so verschieden von der Lebensmitte wie die Adoleszenz von der Kindheit. Ils se rendent compte qu'il s'agit en fait d'une étape du développement de la vie qui a sa propre signification - aussi différente du milieu de la vie que l'adolescence l'est de l'enfance. And they are asking -- we should all be asking -- how do we use this time? Und sie fragen – wir alle sollten fragen – wie nutzen wir diese Zeit? How do we live it successfully? Wie leben wir sie erfolgreich? What is the appropriate new metaphor for aging? Was ist die passende neue Metapher für das Altern? I’ve spent the last year researching and writing about this subject. Ich habe das letzte Jahr damit verbracht, über dieses Thema zu recherchieren und zu schreiben.

And I have come to find that a more appropriate metaphor for aging is a staircase -- the upward ascension of the human spirit, bringing us into wisdom, wholeness and authenticity. Und ich habe festgestellt, dass eine angemessenere Metapher für das Altern eine Treppe ist – der Aufstieg des menschlichen Geistes nach oben, der uns in Weisheit, Ganzheit und Authentizität bringt. J'en suis venue à penser qu'une métaphore plus appropriée pour le vieillissement est celle de l'escalier - l'ascension de l'esprit humain, qui nous amène à la sagesse, à la plénitude et à l'authenticité. Age not at all as pathology; age as potential. Alter überhaupt nicht als Pathologie; Alter als Potenzial. L'âge n'est pas du tout une pathologie ; l'âge est un potentiel. And guess what? Und rate was? This potential is not for the lucky few. Dieses Potenzial ist nicht für die wenigen Glücklichen. Ce potentiel n'est pas réservé à quelques chanceux. It turns out, most people over 50 feel better, are less stressed, are less hostile, less anxious. Es stellt sich heraus, dass sich die meisten Menschen über 50 besser fühlen, weniger gestresst, weniger feindselig und weniger ängstlich sind. We tend to see commonalities more than differences. Wir sehen eher Gemeinsamkeiten als Unterschiede. Some of the studies even say we’re happier. Einige der Studien sagen sogar, dass wir glücklicher sind. This is not what I expected, trust me. Das habe ich nicht erwartet, vertrau mir.

I come from a long line of depressives. Ich komme aus einer langen Reihe von Depressiven. Je suis issu d'une longue lignée de dépressifs. 私はうつ病の長い列から来ました。 As I was approaching my late 40s, when I would wake up in the morning my first six thoughts would all be negative. Als ich mich meinen späten 40ern näherte, wenn ich morgens aufwachte, waren meine ersten sechs Gedanken alle negativ. And I got scared. Und ich bekam Angst. I thought, oh my gosh. Ich dachte, oh mein Gott. I’m going to become a crotchety old lady. Ich werde eine schrullige alte Dame. But now that I am actually smack-dab in the middle of my own third act, I realize I’ve never been happier. Aber jetzt, wo ich mitten in meinem eigenen dritten Akt stecke, wird mir klar, dass ich nie glücklicher war. Mais maintenant que je suis en plein milieu de mon troisième acte, je me rends compte que je n'ai jamais été aussi heureuse. I have such a powerful feeling of well-being. J'éprouve un tel sentiment de bien-être. And I’ve discovered that when you’re inside oldness, as opposed to looking at it from the outside, fear subsides. J'ai découvert que lorsque l'on se trouve à l'intérieur de la vieillesse, au lieu de la regarder de l'extérieur, la peur s'estompe. You realize, you’re still yourself -- maybe even more so. Vous vous rendez compte que vous êtes toujours vous-même, peut-être même davantage. Picasso once said, "It takes a long time to become young. (Laughter)

I don’t want to romanticize aging.

Obviously, there’s no guarantee that it can be a time of fruition and growth. Obviously, there's no guarantee that it can be a time of fruition and growth. Il n'y a évidemment aucune garantie que ce soit une période de fructification et de croissance. Some of it is a matter of luck. C'est en partie une question de chance. Some of it, obviously, is genetic. One third of it, in fact, is genetic. And there isn’t much we can do about that. But that means that two-thirds of how well we do in the third act, we can do something about. We’re going to discuss what we can do to make these added years really successful and use them to make a difference. Now let me say something about the staircase, which may seem like an odd metaphor for seniors given the fact that many seniors are challenged by stairs. Permettez-moi de dire quelques mots sur l'escalier, qui peut sembler une métaphore étrange pour les personnes âgées, étant donné que beaucoup d'entre elles sont gênées par les escaliers.

(Laughter) Myself included. As you may know, the entire world operates on a universal law: entropy, the second law of thermodynamics. Comme vous le savez peut-être, le monde entier fonctionne selon une loi universelle : l'entropie, la deuxième loi de la thermodynamique. Entropy means that everything in the world, everything, is in a state of decline and decay, the arch. There’s only one exception to this universal law, and that is the human spirit, which can continue to evolve upwards -- the staircase -- bringing us into wholeness, authenticity and wisdom. Il n'y a qu'une seule exception à cette loi universelle, et c'est l'esprit humain, qui peut continuer à évoluer vers le haut - l'escalier - en nous amenant à la plénitude, à l'authenticité et à la sagesse. And here’s an example of what I mean.

This upward ascension can happen even in the face of extreme physical challenges. Cette ascension peut se produire même face à des défis physiques extrêmes. About three years ago, I read an article in the New York Times. It was about a man named Neil Selinger -- 57 years old, a retired lawyer -- who had joined the writers group at Sarah Lawrence where he found his writer’s voice. Il s'agissait d'un homme nommé Neil Selinger - 57 ans, avocat à la retraite - qui avait rejoint le groupe d'écrivains de Sarah Lawrence où il avait trouvé sa voix d'écrivain. Two years later, he was diagnosed with ALS, commonly known as Lou Gehrig’s disease. Deux ans plus tard, on lui a diagnostiqué la SLA, plus connue sous le nom de maladie de Lou Gehrig. It’s a terrible disease. It’s fatal. It wastes the body, but the mind remains intact. Il détruit le corps, mais l'esprit reste intact. In this article, Mr. Selinger wrote the following to describe what was happening to him. And I quote, "As my muscles weakened, my writing became stronger. As I slowly lost my speech, I gained my voice. As I diminished, I grew. As I lost so much, I finally started to find myself. " Neil Selinger, to me, is the embodiment of mounting the staircase in his third act. " Neil Selinger est pour moi l'incarnation de la montée des marches dans son troisième acte. Now we’re all born with spirit, all of us, but sometimes it gets tamped down beneath the challenges of life, violence, abuse, neglect. Nous sommes tous nés avec un esprit, mais il est parfois étouffé par les défis de la vie, la violence, les abus, la négligence.

Perhaps our parents suffered from depression.Perhaps they weren’t able to love us beyond how we performed in the world. Peut-être nos parents ont-ils souffert de dépression, peut-être n'ont-ils pas été capables de nous aimer au-delà de nos performances dans le monde. Perhaps we still suffer from a psychic pain, a wound. Peut-être souffrons-nous encore d'une douleur psychique, d'une blessure. Perhaps we feel that many of our relationships have not had closure. Peut-être avons-nous l'impression que nombre de nos relations n'ont pas abouti. And so we can feel unfinished. Perhaps the task of the third act is to finish up the task of finishing ourselves. For me, it began as I was approaching my third act, my 60th birthday.

How was I supposed to live it? What was I supposed to accomplish in this final act? And I realized that, in order to know where I was going, I had to know where I’d been. Et je me suis rendu compte que, pour savoir où j'allais, je devais savoir où j'avais été. And so I went back and I studied my first two acts, trying to see who I was then, who I really was -- not who my parents or other people told me I was, or treated me like I was. Je suis donc retournée en arrière et j'ai étudié mes deux premiers actes, en essayant de voir qui j'étais à l'époque, qui j'étais vraiment - et non pas qui mes parents ou d'autres personnes m'avaient dit que j'étais, ou m'avaient traitée comme telle. But who was I? Who were my parents -- not as parents, but as people? Who were my grandparents? How did they treat my parents? These kinds of things. I discovered a couple of years later that this process that I had gone through is called by psychologists "doing a life review. Quelques années plus tard, j'ai découvert que les psychologues appelaient ce processus "bilan de vie".

" And they say it can give new significance and clarity and meaning to a person’s life. You may discover, as I did, that a lot of things that you used to think were your fault, a lot of things you used to think about yourself, really had nothing to do with you. Vous découvrirez peut-être, comme je l'ai fait, que beaucoup de choses que vous pensiez être de votre faute, beaucoup de choses que vous pensiez à propos de vous-même, n'avaient en fait rien à voir avec vous. It wasn’t your fault; you’re just fine. And you’re able to go back and forgive them and forgive yourself. Et vous êtes capable de revenir en arrière, de leur pardonner et de vous pardonner à vous-même. You’re able to free yourself from your past. You can work to change your relationship to your past. Now while I was writing about this, I came upon a book called "Man’s Search for Meaning"by Viktor Frankl. Alors que j'écrivais sur ce sujet, je suis tombé sur un livre intitulé "Man's Search for Meaning" (La quête de sens de l'homme) de Viktor Frankl.

Viktor Frankl was a German psychiatrist who’d spent five years in a Nazi concentration camp. And he wrote that, while he was in the camp, he could tell, should they ever be released, which of the people would be okay and which would not. Il a écrit que, pendant qu'il était dans le camp, il pouvait dire, si jamais ils étaient libérés, lesquels d'entre eux s'en sortiraient et lesquels ne s'en sortiraient pas. And he wrote this: "Everything you have in life can be taken from you except one thing, your freedom to choose how you will respond to the situation. This is what determines the quality of the life we’ve lived -- not whether we’ve been rich or poor, famous or unknown, healthy or suffering.What determines our quality of life is how we relate to these realities, what kind of meaning we assign them, what kind of attitude we cling to about them, what state of mind we allow them to trigger. Ce qui détermine la qualité de notre vie, ce n'est pas le fait d'avoir été riche ou pauvre, célèbre ou inconnu, en bonne santé ou souffrant. Ce qui détermine la qualité de notre vie, c'est la manière dont nous nous rapportons à ces réalités, le sens que nous leur donnons, l'attitude à laquelle nous nous accrochons, l'état d'esprit que nous leur permettons de déclencher. Perhaps the central purpose of the third act is to go back and to try, if appropriate, to change our relationship to the past. L'objectif central du troisième acte est peut-être de revenir en arrière et d'essayer, le cas échéant, de changer notre relation au passé.

It turns out that cognitive research shows when we are able to do this, it manifests neurologically -- neural pathways are created in the brain. Il s'avère que la recherche cognitive montre que lorsque nous sommes capables de faire cela, cela se manifeste sur le plan neurologique - des voies neuronales sont créées dans le cerveau. You see, if you have, over time, reacted negatively to past events and people, neural pathways are laid down by chemical and electrical signals that are sent through the brain. Si vous avez, au fil du temps, réagi négativement à des événements et à des personnes du passé, des voies neuronales sont établies par des signaux chimiques et électriques envoyés dans le cerveau. And over time, these neural pathways become hardwired, they become the norm -- even if it’s bad for us because it causes us stress and anxiety. Avec le temps, ces voies neuronales deviennent câblées, elles deviennent la norme, même si elles sont mauvaises pour nous parce qu'elles nous causent du stress et de l'anxiété. If however, we can go back and alter our relationship, re-vision our relationship to past people and events, neural pathways can change. Cependant, si nous pouvons revenir en arrière et modifier notre relation, revoir notre relation avec les personnes et les événements du passé, les voies neuronales peuvent changer.

And if we can maintain the more positive feelings about the past, that becomes the new norm. It’s like resetting a thermostat. C'est comme réinitialiser un thermostat. It’s not having experiences that make us wise, it’s reflecting on the experiences that we’ve had that makes us wise -- and that helps us become whole, brings wisdom and authenticity. Ce n'est pas le fait d'avoir des expériences qui nous rend sages, c'est la réflexion sur les expériences que nous avons eues qui nous rend sages - et cela nous aide à devenir entiers, nous apporte la sagesse et l'authenticité. It helps us become what we might have been. Women start off whole, don’t we? Les femmes partent entières, n'est-ce pas ?

I mean, as girls, we start off feisty -- "Yeah, who says? Je veux dire qu'en tant que filles, nous commençons par être fougueuses - "Ouais, qui l'a dit ? "We have agency. "代理店 "がある。 We are the subjects of our own lives. Nous sommes les sujets de notre propre vie. But very often, many, if not most of us, when we hit puberty, we start worrying about fitting in and being popular. Mais très souvent, beaucoup d'entre nous, si ce n'est la plupart, commencent à s'inquiéter de s'intégrer et d'être populaires lorsqu'ils atteignent l'âge de la puberté. And we become the subjects and objects of other people’s lives. But now, in our third acts, it may be possible for us to circle back to where we started and know it for the first time. Mais aujourd'hui, alors que nous en sommes à notre troisième acte, il nous est peut-être possible de revenir à notre point de départ et de le connaître pour la première fois. And if we can do that, it will not just be for ourselves. Older women are the largest demographic in the world. If we can go back and redefine ourselves and become whole, this will create a cultural shift in the world, and it will give an example to younger generations so that they can reconceive their own lifespan. Thank you very much.

(Applause)