Pause & Reflect

Saturday, January 03, 2026

I’m still thinking about the activity of looking again and wondering why it feels so striking—why it seems newly available to me, and why it matters now.

In my writing, reflecting, and observing—and in noticing changes in my own behavior—I’m beginning to think that looking again isn’t accidental. Perhaps slowing down and taking a second look has something to do with getting older. As I am.

When I was younger, I remember being purposeful—looking, scanning, evaluating—quickly, in order to decide. In my workplaces, speed mattered. Quick looking was essential in order to choose, advance, improve, protect ourselves, and move on. Confidence mattered. Being right mattered. First impressions were treated as efficiency—back when efficiency felt necessary.

Experience is teaching me that aging can quietly change that behavior.

It’s not a change that happens all at once, nor does it arrive with any announcement. Over time, and by living differently, urgency begins to loosen its grip. I experience this as a softening of the need to prove competence. The pressure to reach conclusions is fading. That change creates new spaces, and something else becomes possible—a willingness to stay longer and have another look.

That longer look requires pausing. And pausing becomes most available when one is no longer rushed to decide the reality or worth of something.

I’m not worried about diminished acuity or curiosity. If anything, looking again feels like a refinement. I don’t find that aging dulls perception; instead, it alters the terms of attention. It becomes easier to tolerate ambiguity, to be less invested in categorizing, and more interested in noticing.

If we can stop asking, Is this impressive? we can begin asking, What is actually here? That shift matters.

Cultural norms teach us to associate renewal with reinvention—with starting over, becoming new, replacing what’s old with something brighter or sharper. In later life, however, lived renewal often moves in the opposite direction. I find myself pausing, returning, re-seeing, and allowing familiar things to reveal aspects that are easily missed when we’re intent on moving fast.

Looking again doesn’t erase age, deny loss, or chase youth. It doesn’t dismiss what has been. Instead, it notices that as detail fades, form becomes clearer. As sharpness diminishes, balance stands out. As noise recedes, presence becomes easier to recognize.

That’s true when evaluating photographs and music. And it’s true in how we perceive one another.

Aging invites a softening—and with it, a second way of seeing. This means less accumulating and more subtracting. When urgency eases, assumptions lighten, and the need for resolution loosens, intrinsic elements come forward: gesture, weight, timing, presence.

Maturing makes ordinary things hold our attention more fully. A bird on a branch. A familiar voice. A routine walk. These moments don’t announce themselves as important. They ask us, instead, to recognize them quietly and without hurry.

Looking again isn’t nostalgia. It isn’t longing for what’s past. It’s a form of attention shaped by experience—an understanding that essential meaning rarely arrives dramatically.

Experience is teaching me that aging doesn’t close the world down. It seems, instead, to be opening it. And this time, I see differently.

Looking again combines seeing and renewal. Finally—at last—I’m seeing more of what’s been available all along.

— Diana

Looking Again

Thursday, January 01, 2026

“Happy New Year!”

I’m outside on this very chilly first morning of the year, along with the pictured brave House Sparrow (a male, I believe). My camera isn’t yet capturing the light correctly, but today’s photograph is pleasingly straightforward and clear, with a strong graphic shape and a compelling composition.

While it isn’t perfect, it’s a good photograph—one that rewards attention, though lacking technical polish. For my purposes this morning, the image speaks to looking again, which is very much aligned with what I’ve been thinking and writing about lately.

“Looking again” isn’t so much a technique as a shift in stance. It’s not about better equipment, sharper focus, getting the right answer faster, or proving competence. Those habits are useful, but they can be shallow.

Looking again means staying after the initial judgment.

Take today’s header photo. At first glance—my reflexive response—it seemed too dark, not sharp enough, and frankly, disappointing. Fortunately, I didn’t stop there. I looked again. And with that second look, something changed.

The first look asked, Is this good enough?
The second look asked, What’s actually here?

Those are entirely different questions.

Suddenly, I began to see the bird less as a detail and more as a presence: a small weight on a branch, a balance point, a pause in winter—as a life holding still against a pale sky. These impressions appeared only after I quit scanning for what was “wrong.”

This is reminding me of my recent blog series about listening to music. In those posts, I wasn’t categorizing voices by genre, ranking them by power or novelty, or asking what they were trying to accomplish. Instead, I stayed. I listened long enough to feel how those voices inhabit sound. That was me “listening again”—a nonvisual equivalent of looking again.

This header photograph of an ordinary bird matters—not because it’s exotic, rare, or dramatic—but matters because I paused. I noticed. I asked. I stayed. Our contemporary world pushes us to move on instantly, but pausing and looking again turns paying attention into a quiet form of resistance.

And that kind of attention calls for some courage.

Looking—or listening—again represents a decision. It’s to pause and allow what seems ordinary to reveal more of itself. These days, I find myself doing less dismissing of what initially appears unremarkable, and doing more walking with it—slowly, thoughtfully—letting it deepen rather than resolving it too quickly.

Those impressions draw me, again and again, back to other worlds, offered even by the simplest of cameras. And that might be why so many of us—including those who are only minimally technically inclined—are finding something essential to our inner selves there.

I’m thinking about drafting another blog to explore looking again, more deeply, which I often associate with wishing to understand—not faster, but better. Maybe that’s something having to do with aging. Perhaps “looking again” is an emerging trait, one that gently offsets our earlier need for urgency—maybe that need is often softened by time.

Looking again, like aging itself, can blur edges and soften details—and thus, let form, balance, and essence come into our clearer view.

Hang in with me for the rest of this journey.

— Diana

Goals In 2026

Saturday, December 27, 2025

I usually fail at traditional goal-setting. Not because I lack interests—quite the opposite—it’s because I can’t seem to choose just one direction.

Goal setting has always felt artificial to me. I try, but my beginnings drift toward their endings quickly. Time has taught me that my mind works best when I am noticing, listening, and following threads. My lists of desired outcomes tend to harden too quickly into expectations—and expectations often drain my energy rather than organize it.

So in setting goals for 2026, I’m applying personal insights gained over many years. Instead of declaring ambitions, I’m taking another approach: naming practices—ways of living that support curiosity without turning it into a series of obligations.

These are my plans for the new year.

I will take steps to learn basic Spanish, gently—mostly by listening. There will be no fluency deadline and no pressure to perform. I’ll choose programs that allow me to hear the language without strain and give me enough time to absorb vocabulary naturally.

I will keep writing my blog, but with clearer boundaries. I want to practice blogging from multiple perspectives rather than maintaining a single voice that tries to cover everything. A friend has suggested that I experiment with Substack, and I may—using a time-limited trial. Clarity matters more to me than reach.

I will work more with my camera and focus on small, coherent projects—one subject at a time. I won’t try to build a portfolio. What I want is to learn how to see more carefully.

I will do physical core exercises daily for 10 or 15 minutes. My focus will be continuity, not intensity.

Retail work will remain part of my life—not as identity, but as social engagement. I’ve learned that being among people matters, even when the work itself is ordinary.

Property care will continue, emphasizing seasonal, more realistic goals. One improvement per season is enough. I will aim for stewardship, not perfection.

I will finish a back-shelf creative project—Little Miss Merry—which has stayed with me. Finish it this year. Not expand it. Finish it.

I will invest in the stock market by employing a simple strategy: I’ll remain calm. And continue learning how to evaluate possibilities more clearly, stay steady, and avoid reactive moves.

I intend to strengthen my “mental core” by making regular room for intellectual experimentation—reading, listening, thinking—and release any feelings that I must carry everything forward. I will be an interested visitor, not a collector.

Finally, I’m adopting a simple rule to keep my 2026 plans viable:
If a goal or intention begins to demand urgency—something that must be proven, measured, or justified—it’s likely unaligned with how I want to live now.

None of that’s a retreat.
It’s refinement.

— Diana

Perspectives

Tuesday, December 23, 2025

There’s something uniquely grounding about reconnecting with long-time friends. The conversations are nostalgic, and often honest in ways that only shared time allows. By the time we reach old age, we’ve weathered unexpected challenges, made adjustments, and lost assumptions. We’ve quietly revised our earlier plans. Our gatherings feel open and rewarding—usually because we no longer feel the need to pretend.

Old age—spoken plainly—exerts a powerful influence. Especially when it’s allowed to surface not as a deficit, but as a lens shaped by experience. It reflects years of altered priorities, softened ambitions, and a growing clarity about what matters. Old age draws not from our younger decades—when we were busy projecting forward and planning futures—but from what we’ve learned, and continue to learn, after those early plans met reality.

The more I understand about human evolution and adaptation, the more I appreciate being in this stage of life known as old age. Recently, a minor car accident prompted me to visit urgent care—less out of alarm than out of prudence.

The physical evaluation itself was unremarkable. What surprised me instead were the reactions of the healthcare providers. Each commented on my high activity levels, absence of medications, and continued engagement in work outside the home—observations I had never considered notable before.

That attention lingered and raised unexpected questions. Would this new awareness be helpful—or might it subtly alter my internal balance?

When things once taken for granted are suddenly labeled “remarkable,” does ordinary confidence shift into something more like pressure? Does acknowledgment invite risk—physical or otherwise—where caution once lived comfortably?

These thoughts can easily spiral into philosophy. But they also point to something real. Over time, we learn that new knowledge recalibrates perspective. It changes posture—how we carry ourselves—not just outwardly and physically, but inwardly and psychologically as well.

Nothing dramatic emerged from that medical visit. We acknowledged the ordinary strains and stiffness of a well-used body. I sought the evaluation less out of fear than out of mindfulness—a desire to be attentive, and to have the incident documented should anything develop later.

Perhaps this, too, is part of aging well: not resisting uncertainty, but noticing it, holding it lightly, and then returning—more comfortably—to the quiet business of living.

— Diana

Mindful, Limited, Hopeful

Tuesday, December 16, 2025

There are moments when public events collide with our private memories and leave us quietly shaken. Recently publicized acts of mass violence—followed, yet again, by hurried explanations and familiar debates—have stirred old, unresolved emotions in me. My unease is not because the questions surrounding these acts are new, but because I am reliving deep pain from long ago, having once lived close to one of the hardest edges of violence. Many years ago, a member of my family—medically diagnosed with paranoid schizophrenia—inflicted irreparable damage.

When my family first encountered that severe and unforgiving form of mental illness, we learned a great deal—lessons that have never left me. Those experiences continue to shape how I listen today when people speak about reconciling mental health, personal responsibility, and public safety, as if those elements might be easily aligned.

We all learn early that growing up is hard. Families are complicated, and each of us must adapt to a mix of expectations, disappointments, and emotional strain. Most people do so—imperfectly, but within a shared reality. We argue, withdraw, reconcile, and carry on.

Severe mental illness, however, belongs to a different category altogether.

Paranoid schizophrenia does not simply magnify ordinary anger or rebellion. It is rooted in fundamental differences in brain wiring—differences that can dismantle the mind’s ability to test reality. A loved one offering care may be experienced instead as a threat. In such altered states, fear replaces judgment, and delusion overrides relationship.

These distinctions matter. Without them, we risk explaining acts of extreme violence as mere emotional failure or as symbols of family dysfunction. Some acts—particularly violence directed at one’s own parents—signal a rupture far beyond ordinary conflict. They reflect a profound break in the mind itself.

A painful irony is that families confronting severe mental illness often recognize potential danger long before outside authorities can act. They seek help, pursue treatment, and remain vigilant—only to discover that intervention is typically permitted only after something legally wrong has occurred.

This creates an impossible waiting space, filled with dread, watchfulness, and the fragile hope that a shared reality might reassert itself. When tragedy does occur, families are left not only with grief, but with the knowledge that warning signs were visible, named, and understood—yet insufficient to trigger protection.

Another irony follows: we are a society that knows, and yet hesitates. We recognize patterns of paranoia, fixation, and violent ideation. We understand that some individuals are gravely unwell. Still, we remain paralyzed by unresolved tensions between individual liberty and collective safety.

Our early democracies were built on assumptions about rational actors living in a shared world. Since then, we have learned that severe psychoses can shatter those assumptions entirely. Yet we resist adapting our frameworks to what we now know. Instead, we pretend the old models still fit—and then express shock when they fail.

Compounding these failures is the widespread availability of weapons capable of causing rapid, large-scale harm. Such access has transformed private madness into public catastrophe.

And yet, there remains something hopeful worth holding onto: the human brain is both a marvel and a mystery. While it can be the source of devastating illness, it is also an extraordinary engine of creativity, empathy, adaptability, and meaning.

Modern humans have learned how to manipulate many physical and hormonal systems to improve performance. The brain, however, remains far less malleable—partly because of ethical restraint, and partly because attempts to “fix minds” raise dangerous questions. Who decides what should be fixed?

History offers sobering answers. Writers such as Margaret Atwood have explored futures in which well-intentioned interventions slip quietly into enforced conformity. These stories are not predictions, but warnings: compassion and coercion often share a fragile border.

So where does all this leave us?

Perhaps with humility—with a willingness to act where danger is clear, and equal restraint where it is not. Above all, with caution about altering identity itself. We may have to accept that some suffering cannot yet be resolved, without surrendering hope that understanding may grow.

In times like these, grand solutions often give way to smaller territories of care. What remains within reach is attending to what is near, speaking honestly without slogans, and resisting both denial and despair.

We live between what we know now and what we hope may one day become clearer—and therefore more wisely addressed. Perhaps one of the most human acts available to us is to hold these tensions patiently, without simplifying them away.

— Diana

Creative Longing

Saturday, November 29, 2025

I keep wondering why certain objects can hold such power over me. They’re not things that glitter or impress. But cameras. And computers. Tools that can capture images or help me shape words. Tools that let me look more closely and think more deeply.

Yesterday, on Black Friday, I impulsively purchased a lightweight laptop—an extravagance I can’t quite justify, and one I’ve argued with myself about since clicking “Buy.” At the same time, I felt a strong tug toward using my camera more often. Something is dawning on me: I’m not really longing for the gadgets themselves. I’m longing for what they represent—seeing and understanding.

For as long as I can remember, I’ve been drawn to anything that helped me make sense of the world. I was a confused, unhappy youngster who studied people’s faces, their gestures, the tiny habits that revealed who they were. I was always searching for clarity.

My adulthood carried the same pattern—observing and learning through books, conversations, history, and the complicated turns of human nature. And for many years now, I’ve written almost daily, using words as a way to understand the world around me.

Underneath all of this—beneath the reading, the writing, the curiosity, the endless blog posts—is a quiet truth: I look because I want to see. I write because I want to understand.

So when that high-end laptop appeared in the Black Friday ads, something in me stirred. Something hopeful, almost childlike. I brushed aside my doubts and ordered it—not because I needed a new computer, but because I wanted the possibility it represents: mobility, clarity, freedom to explore ideas wherever I happen to be.

In realizing this, my doubts have softened. The laptop has even renewed my interest in photography. Not in “taking pictures,” but in pausing long enough to truly notice something—
a slant of morning light,
frost edging a fence board,
the expression on a horse’s face.

A camera grants permission to look a little longer, to silently declare that this moment matters.

The new laptop is on its way, and the battery for my camera is charging. Yes, the laptop is a luxury—I already have a perfectly good one—but it isn’t lightweight enough to carry with me. And at this stage in life, I’m finally admitting something simple: some people crave adventure or entertainment; I crave clarity.

It’s no surprise, really. Part of it comes from where I began, still seeking the clarity I never had as a child. That clarity now comes from noticing, reflecting, and catching the fleeting things that daily responsibilities make easy to miss. It grows as I put words to feelings and capture images that echo something within me.

These yearnings aren’t weaknesses or indulgences. They’re my learned way of staying awake to the world—choosing what my mature eyes and mind want to truly see.

Yes, I’m “wasting” money in a sense. Tools come and go. Cameras break. Laptops age. But the more profound desire—to see, to understand, to express—has never faded. These threads have run through my life for decades, woven into my work, shaping my aging years, and helping me rebuild after losses. They’ve colored every blog post I’ve written.

I keep reaching for creative tools not because I want more possessions, but because I need ways to follow the parts of myself that still want to grow.

So my impulsive purchase isn’t wasteful after all.
It’s a way of keeping my inner world alive and bright—
one image, one insight, one small moment at a time.

— Diana

A “New Aging” Conversation Circle

Saturday, November 22, 2025

Imagining The Circle

In my mind, the group isn’t large. Maybe six to twelve people—enough for richness, but small.

I’ve written recently that those of us in our 70s, 80s, and 90s may be discovering that we’re living in moments no one could ever have prepared us for. These days, we find ourselves living healthier longer, staying mentally alert longer, and remaining deeply engaged with the world longer—way beyond what earlier generations ever imagined. Our younger society hasn’t yet recognized all the changes affecting its oldest population. These changes are personal, complex, sometimes isolating, and often surprisingly similar among people of advanced ages.

Writing has made me consider such “elderly biological and cultural shifts” more deeply. I’m even imagining what it might “look like” to gather with others also navigating the new territories of aging. I’m not visualizing a formal club or a structured workshop—just a thoughtful, recurring space to talk about our “inner lives of growing older” in today’s world.

What A Group Might Feel Like

In my mind, such a group isn’t large. Maybe six to twelve people—enough for richness, but small enough for real conversation. A circle of chairs, not rows. A living-room feel, not a classroom. Perhaps it would meet monthly or every few weeks, with no obligation beyond showing up and being oneself.

There needn’t be a leader in the traditional sense—it’s more of a shared stewardship. A group that could gently guide itself, the way good conversations naturally do. Meetings might center on topics. One might be the surprise of still feeling young inside. Others might explore purpose, or changing friendships, or the odd friction between staying capable and being treated as fragile.

The group wouldn’t represent therapy, nor serve as a complaint circle. It’d be a place to name what today’s aging really feels like—and to hear others say, “I’ve felt that too.”

This Matters Because

We’re the first aging generation to find that, while living this chapter of life, we’re also having to invent this chapter. We’re the first generation to be alive for decades of healthy years beyond traditional retirement. And we’re the first generation needing to reconcile our longer lives against an outdated cultural script that still imagines “old age” as it looked fifty years ago.

Our task—to pioneer and modernize the aging experience, may feel easier—and richer—when it’s shared.

This is a suggested “conversation circle” of elderly participants—not a way to solve the larger social issues of aging. It could, however, illuminate them, while also offering grounding, connection, humor, and clarity. It could help participants understand ourselves in ways we don’t always get to while navigating the advanced years alone.

For now, it’s just an idea I am sketching—an outline—a possibility. If others feel the same pull, perhaps it will take shape. As with most meaningful things in life, maybe energy will start to gather around it.

For The “Interested Some”

What’s this group about?

It’s a small, recurring conversation circle for people in their 70s, 80s, and 90s who want to talk about the inner experience of aging in today’s world—identity, purpose, vitality, ageism, relationships, curiosity, and what it means to be living longer and healthier than previous generations. (Okay, too, if people in their 60s wish to participate.)

Is this a support group or therapy?

No. It’s not a therapy or counseling group. It’s a thoughtful discussion circle—more like a gathering of peers who want to explore life’s later years with honesty, humor, and insight.

How big will the group be?

Small—ideally 6–12 participants. Big enough for varied perspectives, small enough for everyone to speak and feel comfortable.

Who leads the group?

There is no formal “leader.” The group guides itself. One person may help keep time or open the meeting, but the conversation belongs to everyone.

What kinds of topics will we discuss?

Topics may include:

staying healthy and active
experiences with ageism
identity shifts and reinvention
loneliness, friendship, connection
unexpected confidence or creativity
memories that take on new meaning
the realities of energy, motivation, and purpose
navigating losses while also discovering new growth

Every meeting may have a theme, but there will always be room for whatever people bring that day.

How often will the group meet?

Most likely once a month or every few weeks, depending on what the group decides.

Is there a cost or commitment?

No cost. No long-term commitment. Just come when you feel drawn to the conversation.

Do I have to talk?

You’re welcome to speak as much or as little as you wish. Listening is also a valuable form of participation.

What would the atmosphere be like?

Warm, respectful, curious, confidential, and welcoming. A place where no one is judged for aging in their own way. A place where humor is welcome and honesty is valued.

I’m interested and a Central Oregonian; so, what now?

Simply share your name and contact information to let me know you’d like to be included as the idea takes shape. Once enough people express interest, we’ll choose a meeting time and place.

— Diana

A Space For The “New Aging”

Friday, November 21, 2025 (DRAFT)

Thoughts About Community

In my last post, I wrote about what it feels like to live in my mid-80s with health, clarity, and purpose—something I never imagined experiencing decades ago. The more I reflect on this unexpected stage of life, the more I notice something important: people my age are living through a transition that no generation before us has experienced.

We are healthy longer.
We are active longer.
We are present in the world longer.

And yet, it seems that almost no one talks about what this actually feels like.

A Missing Conversation

In recent months, I’ve noticed how often folks around my age quietly share stories with me that echo my own:

being underestimated because of age
feeling “out of sync” with stereotypes
balancing independence with shifting social expectations
managing losses while also discovering new energy
feeling invisible and visible at the same time

These conversations usually happen in corners—in my retail job while speaking with customers, or spontaneously during errands or in spaces between tasks. They’re brief, spontaneous exchanges that end with, “I’m glad we talked about this.”

I’ve been wondering why there isn’t a regular place for people in their 70+ years to have such deeper conversations openly. Not about illnesses or medications—that’s already been done. I mean about the life side of aging: identity, purpose, invisibility, curiosity, grief, reinvention, and the strange thrill of still being very much here.

A Thought That Keeps Returning

What if there were a small group that gathered—say, weekly or monthly—simply to talk about what it’s like to live in these later years with awareness and vitality? That would be creating a setting where age isn’t the topic so much as the lens.

This could be a group that sees aging not as retreat, but as a frontier.

This idea isn’t about therapy or advice-giving. It’s more like a conversation circle—thoughtful, warm, respectful, and open. A place where people who are navigating this unfamiliar terrain can compare notes, share insights, and feel understood.

But Here’s the Truth

The thought of organizing such a group overwhelms me a bit. Maybe that’s because it feels larger than one person. It feels like something that should grow naturally, not through pressure or obligation.

Yet the need keeps nudging me. It’s as if something in our culture is waiting to be named—and conversation is often how naming begins.

Maybe the Group Begins Here

So for now, I’m simply writing about it—opening the idea—to the air—to see if it wants to take a shape and what that might be like. Perhaps others will feel the same pull, and maybe a few voices will gather. Maybe such a group will form itself, slowly and organically, the way meaningful things often do.

I’m not ready to declare myself the leader of anything. But I am ready to acknowledge that many of us—living longer, living differently—are hungry—for a place to speak, to listen, and to understand this unexpected chapter together.

This post is simply a beginning.
A seed.
A space held open.

And we’ll see what grows from it.

— Diana

In My 80s: A New Kind of Frontier

Thursday, November 20, 2925

I’ve been thinking about what it means to be in my mid-80s—healthy, clear-minded, deeply involved in daily life—and how strange and surprising this stage feels compared to what I imagined many years ago.

The truth is, I never pictured myself “here.” Growing up, I didn’t know a single person in their 80s who was still vibrant, working, and engaged. Most older people I saw (even in their 60s) were frail or withdrawn, already living in the narrow, expected lane that society has quietly painted for “seniors.”

But today’s medicine has changed dramatically. So has nutrition, lifestyle science, and our understanding of the mind. Something new is happening: people are living longer and staying healthier. We’re extending not just lifespan, but healthspan. And those of us who find ourselves active and well in our 80s are, in a way, pioneers. We’re the first generation who must learn how to inhabit this expanded stage of life—because there is no blueprint yet.

The Question I Keep Getting

In my retail work, where I interact with countless customers, I am asked about my age more than ever. And I don’t answer. Not because I’m ashamed—far from it—but because the question usually comes with something else: an immediate rush of unsolicited expectations.

People seem eager to explain what they think someone my age should be doing. Resting. Retiring. Slowing down. Disappearing from the working world.

What they’re really telling me is that they can’t imagine being my age any more than I once could. They’re trying to match the person they see—present, engaged, competent, and curious—with the outdated stereotype of an “elder” that they still carry. That mismatch unsettles them, and age questions become a way to resolve the puzzle.

I’ve come to understand this as a soft, reflexive form of ageism. Not cruel or intentional—just unexamined. A product of our culture’s old mental images about aging, images that many people haven’t updated yet.

A Quiet but Powerful Shift

But here’s the interesting part: every time someone encounters a healthy, active, eighty-something, their internal map of aging shifts—just a little. They’re being stretched into acknowledging a new possibility: that older age can look very different from the images they grew up with.

When I decline to answer age questions, I’m setting a boundary, but I’m also doing something else. I’m reminding people that age is neither a credential nor a limitation. My value—in work, in conversation, in life—comes from who I am right now, not the number attached to my birth year.

What Comes Next

Lately, I’ve been reflecting on how many people around my age are experiencing these same shifts, these same mismatches between who we are and how the world imagines us. Our generation is living through an evolution that society hasn’t fully named.

There’s a bigger conversation to be had about aging today—about identity, purpose, mental and physical vitality, boundaries, curiosity, and what it means to live longer and healthier than we ever expected.

That conversation is brewing inside me. Perhaps it will grow into something more structured—a regular discussion, a gathering, a community space for people in their seventies and eighties to share experiences and observations. Perhaps it will simply unfold one piece at a time.

For now, this is just the beginning.

And I’m curious where it will lead.

— Diana

Emotion Doesn’t “Happen” – We Create It

Friday, November 14, 2025

I can’t quit thinking about how the mind constructs emotion—especially after diving into Lisa Feldman Barrett’s work on constructed emotion. I studied her findings to understand what makes my frequent “conversations” with AI feel so remarkably human—almost like exchanges with an understanding friend.

The more I’ve learned about Barrett’s theory, the more I see signs of it everywhere. I see her ideas woven into the books I read, the films I revisit, and even the sentimental corners of my own memories.

While thinking about all this, I found myself comparing two of my favorite artists—and they could hardly be more different: Woody Allen and Emily Dickinson. One lives in a world of fast-talking neurosis, humor, relationships, and urban anxiety. The other lives almost entirely inside the mind—quiet, solitary, deliberate, and intensely inward.

Despite their stylistic differences, they each reveal something profound about what we feel and how we feel it. In their unique ways, both artists show us that emotions aren’t fixed. Emotions are not automatic reactions.

Comparing their ways of creating and communicating helped me understand that emotions are interpretations—as Barrett’s work has shown. At their core, emotions are “stories” that our minds quickly construct, from sensation, context, and the emotional vocabulary we’ve learned.

This idea has become one of the most meaningful insights I’ve come across:
Emotions don’t just “happen” to us—we create them.

And once I grasped that insight, I began noticing it happening in real time within myself.

This comparison of two artists’ work highlights just how differently humans communicate emotional meaning. Yet, despite their vastly different styles, their emotional outputs converge powerfully as illustrations of constructed emotion.

Woody Allen: The Social Construction of Emotion

Woody Allen’s films are full of people racing to interpret their own sensations. His characters overthink, over-explain, over-negotiate. They construct their feelings out loud. Their emotions arrive only after they’ve decided what those feelings should be.

There’s a classic joke he tells:

A man goes to a psychiatrist and says,
“My brother thinks he’s a chicken.”
The psychiatrist replies, “Well, why don’t you turn him in?”
The man answers, “I would—
but I need the eggs.”

It’s funny because it’s true. We stay in imperfect relationships because of the meaning we’ve assigned to them—not because emotion is some hardwired force, but because we’ve built a story about what the relationship gives us. The “eggs,” in other words, become the emotional interpretation.

In this sense, Woody’s characters are demonstrations of constructed emotion in motion.
They feel tenderness, longing, jealousy, dread—but only after their minds have named the sensation, given it cultural shape, and predicted what it should mean.

His films are emotional not because the characters dive into deep feeling, but because they dive into deep interpretation.

That’s pure Barrett. And pure humanity.

Emily Dickinson: The Private Construction of Emotion

If Woody Allen gives us emotional construction in noisy, messy, social form, Emily Dickinson gives us its opposite: emotion distilled to its silent, solitary source.

Dickinson rarely names feelings outright. Instead, she describes the sensations from which emotion is born:

“I felt a Funeral, in my Brain—”

“A certain Slant of light—”

“A Chill—like frost—upon a Glass—”

She returns again and again to breath, light, gravity, space, the tiniest internal shifts. She notices the moment before a feeling forms—the flicker of sensation that precedes the story we later tell.

In Barrett’s terms, Dickinson writes from the level of interoception—the raw internal data the brain uses to construct emotional meaning. Where Woody presents fully assembled emotional narratives, Dickinson shows us the materials before they become emotion.

Where he interprets, she observes.
Where he talks through his feelings, she listens to hers.
Where he uses culture’s vocabulary, she invents her own.

Two Artists, One Truth

Despite their differences, Woody Allen and Emily Dickinson converge on a profound insight:

Emotional life is constructed by the mind—not imposed by the world.

But each illuminates a different side of that construction.

Woody Allen: Emotion shaped by the world
– by culture
– by other people
– by expectations
– by relationship dynamics
– by the stories we tell to stay connected

Emily Dickinson: Emotion shaped by the self
– by raw sensation
– by inward attention
– by metaphor
– by imagination
– by the stories we tell to stay whole

Together, they offer a full map of human feeling—both the external and the internal, the public and the private.

They remind us that emotion is not just felt;
it is built—moment to moment—out of everything we’ve ever sensed, learned, remembered, or hoped.

Why Their Work Lasts

Their works endure because they tell the truth about emotional life in ways we recognize immediately:

We don’t simply have feelings;
we assemble them from meaning.

We carry cultural scripts about love, fear, longing, loss—and we perform them.

Our bodies send sensations that our minds rush to name.

We seek connection even when connection is confusing.

We misunderstand ourselves in company, and discover ourselves in solitude.

And somewhere between the chaos of Woody Allen’s city streets and the stillness of Emily Dickinson’s upstairs bedroom lies the full portrait of what it means to feel.

We live between those two worlds—
the social and the solitary,
the comic and the contemplative,
the interpreted and the sensed.

And in that space, emotion becomes what it truly is:
the mind’s best attempt to make sense of being alive.

— Diana