I am of the opinion that my life belongs to the community, and as long as I live, it is my privilege to do for it whatever I can. I want to be thoroughly used up when I die, for the harder I work, the more I live. Life is no “brief candle” to me. It is a sort of splendid torch which I have got hold of for a moment, and I want to make it burn as brightly as possible before handing it on to future generations.
—GEORGE BERNARD SHAW
“YOU’RE WHAT?”
Frank Bennack, Paley’s board chair, was incredulous when I told him I was leaving. And skeptical. “You are pathologically unable to retire. Why are you doing this? You could stay in this job for many more years.”
Frank knew about retiring too early. He’d tried retirement, in his words, but had gone back to the Hearst Corporation, and was still CEO at age eighty-four.
“Frank, it’s time,” I told him. “I’m seventy. My mother died of Alzheimer’s with all kinds of regrets. I’ve had a melanoma, caught early, gratefully, and Scott is commuting more than ever to Atlanta for work. Our grandchildren are growing up, and I’m not seeing enough of them. And I feel I’ve done what I came to the Paley Center to do. It just feels like the right time to make this decision.”
But inside I was asking myself the same questions: Why was I doing this now? I told myself it was to have more time, but the reality is that many days, it feels like I have even less of it. I wanted to have more control over my time—and fewer responsibilities for leading a team and reporting to a board. I wanted fewer divided loyalties between what I had to do and what I wanted to do. In reality, I’d felt this conflict less as Paley CEO because this position called on my experience as a journalist, television host, and producer. But a voice I’d learned not to ignore was urging me to give it up.
I also believe that had I been completely honest with myself at the time, I would have seen that I was beginning to feel the urge to take bigger risks than my board at the Paley Center might have approved or that would have been appropriate for my position. I had used my power well as the CEO there—or so I believed—but I wanted to engage more broadly, travel more, do more, move forward again.
Did the decision stem from turning seventy? I’d embraced being fifty and sixty with enthusiasm. I’d started entirely new life acts in those years—from remarriage at fifty-three, to CEO positions at sixty, and a high-profile, well-paying leadership role at seventy. But at seventy, I had to admit that no matter how healthy and active my life was, there were fewer years ahead than behind. That felt different.
No surprise that I celebrated that birthday even more than any before: with seven birthday parties in seven different places with seven different sets of friends. From a surprise party with fifty friends in South Africa to a sixties rock-and-roll party with college friends, all of us dressed like University of Georgia coeds.
No, retiring was just not going to work for my next act. I reframed the announcement that I was rewiring, not retiring.
Unlike many who step away from full-time employment to pursue their bucket list of places to go or adventures to have, I’d already seen a lot of the world and shared adventures with friends and family as part of my work, so my bucket list was more about things to do, experience, and accomplish—now that was a long list!
One of my motivations was a desire to return to Atlanta. Scott wasn’t retiring or rewiring—he’d always had a better work-life balance—and being closer to his work was part of the reason for a move out of New York and back to the South. We already owned a comfortable condo in the Four Seasons Hotel, a lifestyle they called high-class assisted living—room service available 24/7, maid service, a concierge for everything—an easy transition from our active and independent life of good health should the potential perils of aging catch up to us. But we had no sooner settled back in Atlanta and sold the small New York co-op than we went counter to everything people our age usually do and upsized from the condo to a house. A big house in an old midtown Atlanta neighborhood we had both always loved. To many, especially our children, this made no sense: to go from 1,500 square feet and all that security and support to a 5,000-square-foot, 100-year-old house with a yard and a small pool!
“Nothing grand,” Scott assured the children when they protested. “Somewhere where we can have all those nonstop meetings that Pat will soon be organizing and, of course, room for family dinners and overnights with grandchildren.”
Finally, we could take our stuff out of storage and enjoy again our eclectic collection of Native American and African artifacts. At last we could hang our beloved paintings and photographs, each one by an artist we also knew and loved. Once again, we were among visual reminders of the life we’d shared during our nearly twenty years together.
On one wall, the wedding gift of Bylle Szaggars Redford’s aspen paintings, which so deeply connected us to our Sundance home, a small cottage that is our true retreat. With Bylle’s work on our walls, we feel more connected to our shared passions and advocacy for Mother Earth, the driving force behind a multimedia initiative Bylle launched called The Way of the Rain. When we look at her work and the work of so many American Indians, Africans, Cubans, and the two beautiful drawings done by Scott’s sister, the artist Susan Cofer, we feel the spirit and the love that were part of each creation. It’s a feeling we both cherish in this special place, a part of this new chapter in our lives that defines us more than where we live.
Within weeks, Scott put the new home in perfect order while I packed up my New York office and started the planning for curating and hosting another TEDWomen, flying back and forth to LA and New York for various meetings. “Do you realize that you’ve only slept in our bed in our lovely new home six nights in the first six months?” Scott asked.
Clearly, I needed to rewire the part of me that has always been in forward motion! I’ve never had a true off switch; friends call me the Energizer Bunny. “Pat,” Scott puffed on one of our morning bike rides through the nearby park, “do you realize you’re riding faster uphill than down?” “Yes,” I said, puffing, “because I want to get to the top as fast as possible, and the harder it is, the faster I have to go.”
And I had lived that way, too. Never braking or pausing or coasting. Always pushing myself to go faster, move further along, do more, see more, be more.
WITH THIS PACE, I was going to fail retirement, and my life wasn’t looking all that rewired either. I recalled that my father died one year after he retired, and for me, retirement meant stepping out of life, being too tired to participate, napping or rocking in the rocking chairs I’d insisted we put on our new front porch but have not rocked in once since moving in. I wasn’t a good candidate for meditation either, although many friends choose to and thrive because of it. But at least at this point, my rewired life still hasn’t hit the pause or snooze button. I hope it doesn’t for a long time to come!
But what was my life going to be without the regimen and responsibilities of showing up for a job every day? I had aged out of corporate board opportunities, as most corporate boards have age limits of seventy or so—retiring their best, most experienced directors just when we have more time to be more engaged. I understand the reasons for age policies—turnover helps boards stay connected to their customers—and to be honest, I was happy to have all those corporate board meetings off my rewired calendar.
I’m still on many—possibly too many—nonprofit boards, a very important part of my life before and even more so now. I’ve always been passionate about the organizations I serve, and even though it’s hard for me to disconnect from any good cause, I’m trying to further reduce my board responsibilities and further focus my fundraising and my advocacy. I may not have the personal wealth to be as philanthropic as I would like to be, but what I can’t give in donations, I give in time.
With my commitments as chair of the Sundance Institute, to Acumen and to the Skoll Foundation, as cochair of the Women’s Media Center board, and as a member of Participant Media’s advisory board, and of course, my devotion as a founding member and very active supporter and advocate for the V-Day movement, my calendar is full of meetings and my life is full of meaning. With each organization, I am connected to my passions and to truly meaningful purpose: identifying and supporting antiviolence activists all over the world; providing essential funding for social entrepreneurs who are innovating solutions to reduce poverty and restore dignity and compassion to all; and ensuring that independent, marginalized voices are heard and nurtured and that important stories, well told, continue to compel social change. I feel so fortunate to bear witness to this work and to support it in all the ways I can.
But how do I prioritize all the millions of things I want to do, the causes I want to invest in, the friends and colleagues I want by my side? I have a new reality in my rewired life that I have to confess is a bit worrisome: something I call situational turbulence. As I’ve said, part of becoming more dangerous is being more impatient with small things or annoying situations that I might have put up with in the past. I now find certain situations that can create new kinds of turbulence.
I’d flown to the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minnesota, for my annual physical. My doctor, Deborah Rhodes, is a woman I admire for many reasons, including how candid she is as well as caring, and how much fun she is as well as a talented, respected physician who has broken through barriers to get her research and new lifesaving, breast-cancer detection technology adapted—watch her TED Talk to get the whole story. She’s my personal physician and personal hero!
As she unwrapped the blood pressure cuff from my arm, Deb observed, “Boy, are you lucky to have low blood pressure. That’s how you’ve been able to take on all these stressful activities.”
“Yeah, but lately I feel like I’m really pushing it because I’m having all these eruptions of impatience.” I told her about what had happened with the flight to Minnesota: I’d been upgraded to business class because of my frequent-flyer status, but when I got to the boarding area, my upgraded seat had disappeared. The gate agent investigated, his frown deepening as he tapped on his computer.
“I probably shouldn’t tell you this,” he confided, “but I can tell that someone meddled in the system. They downgraded you and upgraded someone else instead, probably a friend. They shouldn’t have done that.” He couldn’t fix the problem, but suggested I call the frequent-mile folks, where I got nothing but a runaround. “I know this is a first-world problem,” I groused to Deb, “but it’s just so unfair, and I’m embarrassed by how upset I am about it.”
Deb laughed. “I know exactly what you’re talking about!” She told me that she’d flown into an absolute rage because she’d stood in line at a department store for forty-five minutes to return a fifty-dollar blouse, only to have the sales clerk explain that she couldn’t return it even with the receipt and credit card because her daughter had made the original purchase. “Pat,” she told me, “what you’ve got is situational turbulence.”
The description stuck and now I use it to describe these incidents when my impatience leads to turbulence. “Men don’t seem to get upset in the same way by these small things,” Deb said. “I think it’s because they don’t come into these situations with the same history of being treated unfairly. It’s like the weathering concept we talk about in medicine. If you experience these microaggressions of racism or sexism over a long period of time, the ability to resist them is weathered away and the body responds differently.”
Situational turbulence is the world we’re in now, and we’re wise to recognize it as a driving force. This isn’t about an airline reservation or refund line, of course. I know those are signs of privilege. I’m trying to use my impatience and my privilege to push back against the underlying causes of acts of injustice, however small or seemingly trivial. We’re living in a world where so many people are being treated unjustly, a world in which millions of women are dealing with violence and working for less money than male counterparts doing the exact same jobs, being harassed in the workplace, and being turned down for leadership positions. That’s why it matters. It’s time for women to show up, stand up, and support each other, to be the collective force that we are completely prepared to be. From where I’m standing, we should be impatient about everything!
When I tap into situational turbulence, I’m tapping into a vein of righteous anger, which women have so often been asked to disown. I don’t want anyone to conflate complaints about injustice with being bitchy or whiny. I was taught as a little girl that expressing anger had dire consequences, so I hid my rage behind tears. Now I want righteous anger to fuel righteous action.
We can’t afford to be polite or nice or worry about being acceptable or popular. I’m done making decisions based on whether people will like me! No more Ms. Nice Girl! I want to use my “situational turbulences” to raise awareness of the systemic causes of inequality and injustice—and then follow them to the right approach for reparations and repairs.
WHAT’S ALSO RIGHT for me in so many ways, I’ve discovered, is to continue the global adventures that have been so much a part of my working life as a journalist and activist. I’ve joined the small board of a travel company, Roar Africa, owned and led by Deborah Calmeyer, a force of nature who grew up in the wild nature of Zimbabwe and now lives in Cape Town and New York. As Scott and I took our first Roar Africa trip to South Africa, we realized that we had an opportunity now to deepen our love of travel and discovery through what Deb calls learning journeys, a combination of adventure travel with specially curated experiences with cultures and communities that aren’t on tourist itineraries.
Last year, Deb even added a highly curated program of talks and presentations from well-known thought leaders in conservation, culture, community, and women’s empowerment—TED Talks on safari is how one participant described the experience at our first Roar and Restore retreat at Segera, one of Kenya’s top-ranked safari camps and game preserves. On these journeys that Scott and I now take and invite friends to join, we are noticing an effect that psychologists have called rewilding. Especially on our trips to the African continent, we’ve felt a deep connection with the natural environment; even this Energizer Bunny pauses to flow with the natural rhythms of life in the wild. Psychologists say that the rewilding we’ve been experiencing on each of our African learning journeys lasts after our return home. On a deeply personal and important level, I now know, at least in part, why I’d been led to rewire my life; I need the time to rewild.
Journalist Richard Louv has documented the importance of these connections in his work on nature-deficit disorder. In his research, he’s observed what happens to children who have less time in nature and more time in front of screens, big and small. Watching the complete and total absorption of a three-year-old granddaughter who gets her hands on an iPhone or a TV remote, I don’t need research to note the effect, but the studies point to a connection between the loss of time in nature and a loss of curiosity about the world—and, scarier still, a documented loss of empathy among the generation growing up with more virtual reality than human or animal interaction. For this reason and others, we set aside some rewilding funds to take each of our grandchildren to Africa as a kind of rite of passage when they turn thirteen. We compose a journey that provides a deep dive into the communities and cultures of the countries we visit as well as close-up interactions with the animals and their habitats. So far, the outcomes have proven more valuable than any gift we could design; the grandchildren are fully present and perhaps rewilded too.
As an admitted connection addict who actually answers emails under the covers so that I don’t wake Scott, I worry for us as a global community, connected virtually as never before, yet with a growing disconnect from other people and places and perhaps even a disconnection from our own better selves. Being aware of this potential disconnection certainly fuels my passion for travel, for being present, and even for pausing, which I am learning to do: to learn patience in a leopard’s stalking, feel empathy as we observe elephant families mourning over the bones of a dead relative. These are meaningful encounters and they’re changing me. Becoming more present and more patient has been a big part of my becoming more influential as an advocate for the natural beauty, resources, and animals of Africa, all of which are threatened by the very present dangers of human encroachment, poaching, hunters’ egos, and ignorance.
I have noticed, too, that I am never tired when I travel. I am energized and more woke, as my African American friends say, and I can’t think of a better description of how I feel when I step onto soil I haven’t walked before, or at least not on the same path or to the same destination. It’s about learning about everything: what is wild and beautiful and what is wrong and painful and if there is anything I can do to make a difference.
It’s time for women to pack our bags and take a car, train, boat, plane—or all four—and go where we can learn, discover, reconnect with ourselves and others, to be open to adventures that challenge our fears, to experiences that push us beyond our boundaries. Choose a place you haven’t been and go there. It may be as close as the community on the other side of town or as far away as Cuba felt to me on my first visit to that magical island, but wherever you go, I hope you find a rooftop and dance.
You know by now in my story that I love to dance. I used to divide friends and dates into the dance and don’t dance categories, knowing I would always prefer the dance group for company on and off a rooftop, where I first felt the total freedom that dance can bring, or in the risings of One Billion Rising, where I feel the power of dance to dare, to disrupt, to be dangerous.
THERE’S ANOTHER DISTINCTION, besides dance or don’t dance, that I’m using now in choosing friends, colleagues, even causes. This one comes from my close friend, Carole Black, former president of Lifetime, and one of the most positive people I know. She’s also laser-focused on what she wants, unwilling to waste her time, and absolutely clear about what matters and what doesn’t. That alone is a characteristic of becoming dangerous that has taken me much longer to understand and embrace than it did for Carole. When I asked her, many years ago, what helped her stay so sure of her needs and purpose, she answered, “I divide the world into two camps: fountains and drains. When somebody walks into a room, do you feel like the energy goes up like the water in a fountain, or do you hear the gurgle, gurgle, gurgle of the positive life force going down the drain?”
I took the metaphor to heart and used it to make decisions about whom I hired in my CEO positions. It works—fountains make things happen; drains doubt and dispute and block forward movement. Now I’m applying this same assessment to friends and people with whom I want to work and play, travel and share experiences. If there’s a wonderful cause but I feel drained by the people leading it, I’m the wrong person for the right cause and I choose to put my energies elsewhere. It takes rewiring and maybe losing a few friends and dropping a cause or two.
These days, all my friends are fountains. Some friends have remarked, “You have so many friends,” as if that indicates a lack of judgment on my part. But I have friends from every part of my journey through this life, and I try to stay connected to them over time and distance as fountains of learning and love.
My college roommate, Glenda, is still my best friend, even though our lives since those days of classes and campus rallies and fraternity parties could not have been more different. She is still married to the same college sweetheart and has lived in Atlanta all her life. Throughout my peripatetic life, I would travel back at least once a year to visit family and always have a sleepover with Glenda and her family. I would share my global escapades, confess my deepest fears, and envy her stable, settled life. We have so little in common and yet we love each other deeply and unconditionally.
I can’t think of any single aspect of my very privileged life that gives me greater joy or more meaningful support or better company than my diverse and delicious circle of women friends. Too many to name here, but you know who you are.
To my women friends who are in what Jane describes as our prime time, however, I feel a special bond and a big responsibility.
We are potentially the most powerful women on the planet. Think about it. There are approximately one billion women over the age of fifty in the world. We’re the fastest-growing population on earth! We have the kind of experience that can only result from having seen a lot and done even more. We have the perspective and insights that arise after surviving failures and disappointments, overcoming the challenges that accompany each age of a woman’s life. And because most of us are healthier and more active than any generations of older women before us, we’re not ready or willing to take to our beds or sit on the beach or be anywhere other than right in the middle of the action.
We’re better able to let go of some or most of the daily action of jobs, titles, attending to family. We’re ready to leverage all that we know and the lessons we’ve learned the hard way to make it easier for the generations following us—not only because this makes us feel useful and valued, but because this is the way we can make the biggest difference for women everywhere.
I’ve thought a lot about how becoming dangerous is playing out in my life now. It certainly means I’m less patient—about very nearly everything, but especially injustice and unfairness. It means expressing anger when I feel it and being ready to fight for what matters. It means caring less what people say and saying more clearly what I think and feel. It has also meant coming to terms with my past, letting go of blame and shame, and bringing forward some of the experiences, buried deep, for better understanding of what my purpose is now. It means facing up to my privilege and harnessing every aspect of privilege and power to open doors, build bridges, heal divides, and fight for possibilities and a more equitable world for all.
Each of us has to find our own way of describing and living from our own definition of danger. For one woman, it’s speaking truth to power by dropping a trail of f-bombs. For another, it’s volunteering at the local homeless shelter. For others, it’s running for a local school board or refusing to shop at a place that discriminates or tithing to a cherished cause or making phone calls for political candidates or simply saying no and setting a clean, strong boundary.
I hope I’ve made the case with this book that it’s time for us to reframe the word dangerous. Let me add one more truth about becoming dangerous that I believe more strongly every day: you can’t be dangerous from the sidelines! We’ve got to jump in, be engaged, embrace more risks, optimize all our networks of friends and colleagues, and do more to shape a future where idealogues, tyrants, narcissists, and abusers pose less danger—and have less power.
I am also committed to reframing the word and prevailing stereotypes and definition of power. Remember, the word comes from the Latin root meaning “to be able to.” I believe that women are able to change the definition of power as Bella Abzug predicted nearly thirty years ago: “Women will change the nature of power, rather than power changing the nature of women.” All my faith that the future will be better is grounded by my belief that women are going to come into positions of power and leadership and that we are going to use our power and share our power differently and effectively to improve the lives of other people, especially those without privilege, representation, opportunity, or access to power.
People have argued that historically, women in power governed much as men did, but I believe these leaders were constrained by a patriarchal construct that challenged them to follow the prevailing and dominant model of leadership. In the past, many had to lead without the support of other women. This lack of support is primarily why the United States hasn’t had a woman president. What will it take to make that happen? Feminist.com founder Marianne Schnall asked this question in her popular book, What Will It Take to Make a Woman President of the United States? Remembering that we almost had a woman president in 2017, when an experienced and well-prepared woman leader, Hillary Clinton, won the popular vote, it’s time to ask, what will it take now?
I’m counting on the “supermajority”—that’s women in nearly every country—and it’s also the name of a new US-based initiative to train, mentor, and support women to put themselves forward to lead, founded by three of the most inspiring women leaders I know: Cecile Richards, Ai-jen Poo, and Alicia Garza. All these efforts to connect women across cultural, social, political, and geographic divides, to unite them around shared values and experiences, can lead to a shift in the power paradigm that still exists in nearly every sector of work and life in nearly every country.
Ted Turner put forward another idea about what it will take when he spoke before the United Nations General Assembly some ten years ago: “It’s time for men to step down and let women lead. Maybe for the next hundred years men should be banned from becoming leaders as it will take that long to rid the world of testosterone poisoning.”
We don’t have one hundred years to change direction, to reclaim the power that has been given up or taken away. We also don’t have time to repeat the mistakes of previous movements, which have left many out when fighting for rights or access to power or opportunity. Acknowledging the omissions of the past, we have an opportunity, and indeed an imperative, to lead in a way that truly leaves no one out or behind—not other women, not those without representation, not men or boys. The fears of win-lose can be replaced by win-wins when doors to opportunities open wider than ever, often by activating incentives and strategies for inclusion, and when each of us commits to be an advocate for those not present in all the rooms where decisions are made.
As a global community of women, we are at an intersection where the risks are bigger but so are the opportunities to lead toward a more just world, and I hope I have persuaded you to take up the opportunities (and the risks) to lead for change wherever you live or work, or wherever you may be on your life’s journey. At this place and time in my journey, I am prepared to be as dangerous as I need to be to do my part.
As the quotation at the beginning of this epilogue suggests, I am not viewing my life as a “brief candle,” but as a splendid torch to be thoroughly used up at the end of this journey.
By sharing my story, speaking my truth, I am not passing the torch but lending it here to light the way forward for others. Braver and bolder, I am dancing in its dangerous light. Join me.