September University

Those of us past middle-age share a perspective that’s possible only through life experience. We are aware that time is short, that the most valuable things we’ve learned are not necessarily easy, simple or quick, but that strenuous effort and complexity add quality to life.  Slow is often preferable to fast. We know that reason, deliberation and delayed gratification are often the only sure way of reaching long-term satisfaction.

The “golden years” is a metaphor for perspective, nothing more, and nothing less. Perspective is why the final chapters of life are important. Our lives seem to matter more with age because of the context our evolving perception brings to bear on our past experience and on our hope for the future. The more we learn and expand our knowledge of the world, the more meaningful our understanding becomes. Wisdom is an ally of age and a friend to experience, but it’s more like a lover to a reasoned effort to better understand the world and our place in it.

Circumspective reflection is a characteristic of maturity, and once this effort achieves critical mass, it becomes an unrelenting thirst for insight. Many people despair about failing to experience the joy that the media lead us to expect during the golden years because aging alone is insufficient to produce such experience. Only a sustained effort to understand the mysteries of life yields such reward. This is why so many others, even in ill health, seem to defy hopelessness with enthusiasm to their very last breath.  

Sept-U, in concept, is a metaphor for intellectual maturity and represents an ambitious quest on behalf of posterity. September University, the book, is a call to action, a social forecast, and above all a passionate argument that a bright future depends upon the experiential wisdom of aging citizens.

Sept-U is a state of mind: it has no physical address, no faculty, and no staff. Instead, September University is a concept for a new way of aging, with the aim of erasing the notion of retirement from our vocabulary. It's a vision of retirement that replaces a time devoted to doing very little with a time of reflection, when people who've entered the September of life have the opportunity to make their greatest contribution to the generations to follow.

A September University frame of mind means looking forward to sifting through a half-century or more of experience, sorting those things that are truly important from those that aren't, and finding ways to pass on that wisdom.

I've been writing about self-education for more than two decades. I've published five books on the subject and one novel. My latest book, The Rapture of Maturity: A Legacy of Lifelong Learning, is concerned with using our knowledge and experience in our later years and leaving the world a better place in the process.

September University: Rediscover the Wonder of Existence and Help Shape the Future will be published  January 21, 2009.  For other books, visit Autodidactic Press web site. -- Charles D. Hayes

Email Charles at: autpress@alaska.net