Composing a Further Life: The Age of Active Wisdom

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The following excerpt is from Composing a Further Life: The Age of Active Wisdom (September 2010) by Mary Catherine Bateson, reprinted with the permission of Knopf Copyright 2010 by Mary Catherine Bateson.

Chapter I Thinking About Longevity

I like to think of men and women as artists of their own lives, working with what comes to hand through accident or talent to compose and re-compose a pattern in time that expresses who they are and what they believe in-making meaning even as they are studying and working and raising children, creating and re-creating themselves. Just as the use of a new room in a house depends on what is already there in the lives and relationships and …