THE IMAGES THAT Bodi sent me are from the heyday of his career as a photographer—all selfie-like poses with his famous clientele from an era before selfies were an actual thing. In one photo, he stands arms crossed with a smug grin next to a young Geraldo Rivera, while in another he radiates awe posing next to Coretta Scott King. One of the most impressive photos looks most like an actual selfie, as Bodi appears to be straining to tilt his head into the scene next to the imposing, square-jawed figure of Ted Kennedy, whose serious expression, capped by a royal wave of hair, seems to be staring off the face of a coin. These photos are all from the early to mid-1980s, when Bodi was the king of advertising photography, running a successful studio in midtown Manhattan and managing one of the most recognized ad campaigns of the era.
When Bodi first came to see me a few years ago, however, he was no longer a king. Instead, he reported a long-standing history of depression that was flaring up again after a relatively long dormancy. He had just turned sixty-five, and although this is a common retirement point for many individuals, he felt as if his life had been in the doldrums for many years and now seemed to be stalling even more. His demeanor was always friendly and pleasant, but he wore a sadness on his face and expressed a feeling of boredom and sometimes outright failure. Bodi’s life had peaked in his midforties, with incredible personal success in his work that brought in nearly a million dollars in earnings in 1984. The major New York advertising firms wanted Bodi, needed Bodi, and sought out Bodi for their print and TV ad campaigns for products such as M&M cookies, Bic shavers, and his pièce de résistance—IBM’s ubiquitous 1980s ads for their new personal computers (PCs) featuring a Charlie Chaplin avatar in tux, top hat, and floppy shoes trying to show how even the lovable Little Tramp could “move with modern times” and bring the power of the PC into each home. Bodi was young, vibrant, and successful—depicted best in the photo he sent me, in which his grinning, confident, and joyful self stands arm in arm with none other than the 1980s prophet of successful aging—comedian George Burns.
So, what happened with Bodi between his peak in 1984 and his rut when he found his way to my office? What factors led to such a dramatic tumble in income and stature, marked depression, and finally a quiet and humble life in South Florida—so far away, it seemed, from the bustle of his former studio throne in Manhattan? When I asked Bodi this very question, he described to me how he failed in his struggle to reinvent himself as the world of advertising photography changed around him. He came to believe that staying on top required something he couldn’t get, explaining that “I would have needed a new brain.” Like the dawn of a new fashion or music style that washes out the old and sweeps in the new, advertising styles changed and Bodi was no longer the “in” person. He tried over and over, but could not replicate his previous success. In response, he slowly but steadily withdrew into what I call the “stagnant quo” of aging—a life that appears quiet and safe but lacking the creative pursuits or relationships that once brought so much purpose and meaning.
Bodi was relatively young when his world shifted so dramatically, but his experiences are common for many aging individuals who retire, take on new roles, or reach a point where their normally busy and fulfilling life begins to change and they lose their previous pathways and purposes. Sometimes, this change is by choice; other times, it is forced by life circumstances. Either way, it’s a disorienting and seminal age point that often comes to define the rest of one’s life. Trying to move forward and either renew a previous strength or success or reinvent oneself into something different is often difficult, frightening, and seemingly impossible, and might prompt someone to simply give up. The resulting stagnant quo is safe, reassuring, and sustaining—but also constricting. At best, it brings a relatively quiet life as long as there are no significant stresses or other circumstances that challenge its limits. At its worst, it is represented by rigid and reactionary approaches to aging that can lead to estrangement or outright conflict with others. Examples include aging individuals who cannot move on to new relationships after major losses, who cannot embrace different ways to think or create, or who refuse to try new technology because it seems too complicated or even unnecessary. It’s John Henry against the steam drill.
The stagnant quo also drives what some have labeled a “youthist” philosophy among individuals who venerate looking and acting young, as if that is the greater good. Aging people who ignore or deny the changes that come with age and try to maintain or recapture the attributes of their younger self, however, often run into serious roadblocks. In desperation, they may act like aging despots who refuse to yield the grip of power or prestige, and end up driving future generations to ruin. They risk becoming the kind of bickering, backbiting, entitled, and eternally offended people who we see on reality television every day. Ageist attitudes are often reinforced by encounters with such older individuals who refuse to accept change and are stereotyped as “stuck in their ways.”
Nonetheless, there is compelling logic to keeping things stable and unchanged as we age. Why not circle the wagons and resist changes that may be painful and destructive? If we’ve done things a certain way and it’s worked well, why change? Even if we’ve embraced aging and optimized surviving, what else does aging bring? These questions can be condensed into the third and final important question that we face as we age: Why thrive?
For middle-aged women, the experience of menopause is a major transition in life. As estrogen production slackens and then ceases, a woman’s body feels and shows numerous changes, and her mind must cope with the fact that she is no longer fertile. Men undergoing andropause face mildly comparable changes in their body as testosterone levels slowly decline, with losses in muscle mass, libido, and strength. With both phenomena, aging has come knocking on the door as physical attributes that are fundamental parts of our identity begin to change. In an analogous fashion, the sort of challenging and symbolic stagnant quo–causing age points that Bodi and other aging individuals face can sometimes impose a halt or deviation from previous personal development. This stalled development does not involve the same hormonal or physiological changes as with menopause or andropause, but can have an equal if not more profound symbolic and life-altering impact. This age-associated phenomenon is common but has no specific word to describe it, and so in lieu of the inelegant term stagnant quo, I will instead suggest “geropause” as an appropriate label.
A geropause refers to a downward shift or even a moratorium on pursuing and developing new interests, skills, relationships, roles, or life circumstances. For many aging individuals, a geropause is synonymous with retirement from active creative activities. For an artist, craftsman, or writer, it is a block from previous artistry; literally, the cessation of creative works. Geropause involves the loss of one’s purpose without anything to replace it. It is not the end of aging per se, but the end of aging that is dynamic, meaning that it is a force for change, and the end of aging that is creative, meaning that it is generating and innovating new things. In essence, a geropause is the beginning of our stereotypical conception of “old age.”
The age point that triggers a geropause may occur at the brink of the adult aging process, as with Bodi, or much later in the process, as with a woman I’ll call Suzanne. Suzanne’s life up until the age of seventy-two had been what she described as a “good hectic,” working as a fund-raiser for several charities, traveling with her husband, and spending time with her grandchildren. After her beloved father died, she decided it was time to retire from work and devote more time to her mother. Unfortunately, she discovered that her husband was having an affair, and during an attempt to reconcile with him it became apparent that there had been too many secrets and lies for her to trust him again. In grief, she moved away to live near her daughter, buoyed in part by memories of her wonderful younger years as a doting mother. This attempt to renew her role as a mother was ill-fated from the get-go, however, since her son-in-law kept her at arm’s length.
Within ten months of her move, Suzanne found herself running out of funds and feeling increasingly depressed. She returned to her home state and temporarily moved in with her elderly mother, only to find herself in perpetual conflict with her brother. She was at a major crossroads in her life, but felt paralyzed over what to do. The crown of wisdom that she had gained with age—all the self-knowledge, caring instincts, and insights into her family dynamics—was now not a strength but a lodestone around her neck, making her feel even more depressed, inadequate, and bereft of support. She had grown up with a lifelong model of being a woman who got married, had kids, and ran a family—but this perceived “normal” situation was at odds with her current life circumstances. The strong men in her life had all abandoned her, and she grieved each loss—by death, by affair, by rejection—every day. She fretted about losing her ninety-year-old mother. She was swallowed in a geropause—stuck in time and place, wanting to feel better, but not certain who, what, or where would make the difference.
The circumstances of both Bodi and Suzanne illustrate different forms of a geropause depending on how it is triggered and perpetuated.
Active: An active geropause occurs when someone makes a conscious decision to retire from work or to stop an endeavor, relationship, or pursuit, with the expected but not fully realized consequences that a major cessation of previous activity and purpose will occur. Examples include retiring from a job without a clear plan B, ending a marriage without any plans for seeking other relationships, or quitting a church or club without any new connections in sight.
Passive: A passive geropause occurs when someone loses motivation, purpose, opportunities, resources, skills, or some other ability that was key to sustaining his or her activity. Examples include losing interest in the beliefs of one’s religion, no longer having sufficient eyesight or coordination to keep driving, or running out of money to keep paying for a club membership or regular vacations.
Inhibited: An inhibited geropause results from the rapid imposition of fears, lack of confidence, or some conflict that blocks previous activities. Examples include becoming afraid to drive on highways and so ceasing to go to an adult education program, feeling one can’t play bridge as well as before and so no longer attending regular tournaments, or dropping out of an organization after having a fight with members of the board.
In each type of geropause, a person has refused or is unable to change or confront a barrier, leading him or her to withdraw into a more limited and protective lifestyle. The narrow and constricted circumstances of a geropause can be a recipe for unhappiness, boredom, or turmoil, however, if the person becomes dissatisfied with his or her situation or has new stresses or demands imposed by its unintended circumstances. For example, Suzanne believed that moving in with her mother would be simple and economical, allowing her to relax with a loving relative and build up some cash reserves. After a few months, however, she learned that her family was not willing to help with any care issues or finances, and so the burden fell squarely on Suzanne and quickly became overwhelming and demoralizing.
Both Bodi and Suzanne initially tried but failed to get out of their geropause, and this realization led to feelings of frustration and eventually depression. In their cases, as with all geropauses, there are three fundamental factors that drive such failures—nostalgia, old brain, and friction.
Nostalgia: The term nostalgia refers to an emotional yearning for a place, time, or circumstances from one’s past that one perceives to have brought great personal satisfaction, happiness, and meaning. Nostalgia is an influential psychological phenomenon whose power can be found in its very origins in the Greek terms nóstos, which means “homecoming,” and álgos, which means “ache” or “pain.” The term was originally used to describe the homesickness in ancient soldiers. Research has shown that a nostalgic point of view can counteract loneliness, help us cope with stress, improve our mood, enhance meaning, and increase our perceptions of being supported, all by transporting our mind to places of comfort and connection. The construction of a nostalgic point of view, as with all memories of the past, does not necessarily have to jibe with what actually existed or occurred, but is largely a motivated, contrived set of memories that can change over time. Although we imagine memories of the past to be like permanent chiseled inscriptions in our brain, they are actually quite malleable, especially with repeated recollection. Thus, we can conjure up a nostalgic point of view as needed, sculpt it to the circumstances, and feel better about our situation.
In a geropause, however, nostalgia brings all the positive feelings and soothing but also serves as a trap by fixating a person in the past and casting a pall on the present and future as inadequate and even dangerous. The person wants to preserve, experience, and develop a previous world that no longer exists, and which can only exist by pushing aside or denying current reality. C. S. Lewis captured the risk of this pursuit, stating, “These things—the beauty, the memory of our own past—are good images of what we really desire; but if they are mistaken for the thing itself they turn into dumb idols, breaking the hearts of their worshippers. For they are not the thing itself.” Cultures that attempt to preserve specific customs from the past have to repeat them endlessly and constantly identify and weed out intrusive elements, which requires a tremendous amount of energy and admonitions on a community level. On a personal level during a geropause, this is tough to do without alienating friends and family.
Consider the case of my former patient Myra who came to me not by choice but on the urging of her daughter. She was seventy-six years old and spent her winters in Miami visiting her daughter while her husband remained in New York. When we met, she denied having any new or different problems other than her long-standing grief over the loss of her eldest son from suicide some twenty years prior. For over an hour she described to me his life in detail, including his success as a stockbroker, his two beautiful children, and his broken marriage, which led to a depression and then death. The details she provided of the days leading up to that last event, and the poisoned relationship with her daughter-in-law, sounded as if they happened a week ago. In her mind, I realized, the events were still quite raw even after two decades. She lived her life based on this loss, and attempted to impose her grief and what she imagined to be her son’s wishes and values on his two children, who were now adults themselves. Her relationship with her husband was frozen in time and had never grown beyond her grief, and so she spent little time with him. Her daughter was growing increasingly concerned because her mother refused to do anything other than talk about her dead son and try to spend time with his children. It was an obsession that had not yielded to several attempts at psychotherapy over the years. The daughter felt neglected and was worried that her brother’s two children were becoming sick of their grandmother’s intrusive style, especially as they were about to begin their own families.
Myra’s nostalgia for her life when her son was still alive was soothing her mourning, even after so many years, but was crippling and stunting every other relationship and pursuit in her life. She did reasonably well when she could step in as a second mother to his children, but this would eventually come to an end. Her connection to her son and the world in which he was alive was beginning to fray, but she remained stuck. Somehow, she needed to find a way beyond her grief—but she viewed such a change as synonymous with having to give up and finally lose her son. To Myra, such a thought was simply unthinkable.
Old brain: Bodi’s comment about needing a “new brain” was telling. Our brain is socialized in a given time, place, and culture and becomes wired in certain ways as a result. The “greatest generation,” as they are called, have common views on service to country and the role of patriotism that tend to be different from those of individuals who grew up during the Vietnam War era. They grew up on big band music whereas their children grew up with rock and roll; they grew up with traditional roles of men and women, whereas their children led the women’s liberation movement and the sexual revolution. These cohort effects lay down general ways of thinking and feeling about life that can be difficult to break. Bodi became successful as a photographer by breaking from previous styles and introducing a new approach; but then younger photographers came in with a “new brain” that pushed him and others aside. If such “old brains” can’t think like newer brains, they must instead be willing to do different things, perhaps even by giving up previous vocations. Bodi still wanted to be an advertising photographer but couldn’t imitate new styles, and so he failed at the same profession. He was able to find some success as an art dealer, but never with the same personal or financial success as he had before. He was not able to adjust both his profession and expectations, and this perpetuated his geropause.
Friction: Sometimes change brings too much psychological or interpersonal emotion, conflict, or overall friction to bear, and a person withdraws so as to lessen the pain. In these circumstances, there is often a lack of sufficient will, grit, and self-confidence. Psychologist Albert Bandura referred to this attribute as “self-efficacy,” or the belief in one’s ability to complete a task or meet a goal. As we age, we often retain knowledge of our abilities and strengths, but sometimes lose confidence in our ability to exercise them. This loss of self-efficacy prompts fears of failure and loss of dignity, which in turn fuels the paralysis of a geropause. Many individuals who once thrived in a marriage or other relationships often give up after being divorced or widowed, not feeling able or confident enough to be able to engage in a mutual caring, affectionate, and even sexual relationship in later life. They imagine the friction of misunderstandings, rejections and the potential burden of romantic or sexual needs and decide that it’s simply not worth it; indeed, that it is easier and better to be alone. This is not to imply that every aged person who is single is in a geropause, but to point out that sometimes the decision to be alone is guided less by personal preference and more by fear.
Several core fears of a geropause are driven by a combination of these factors. For example, if you ask aging people how to troubleshoot issues with a personal computer or smartphones, they often point to an adult child or grandchild as their information technology specialist. Never before in history have older generations been so dependent on younger generations for technological guidance. In ancient tribes, the adults and elders taught the main customs—how to hunt, skin animals, sew, and prepare meals. Throughout all subsequent history, the transfer of knowledge from old to young didn’t reverse until the 1980s, when newer, smaller, and faster pieces of technology began emerging on a regular basis, many linked to the use of music or games that are of primary interest to adolescents and young adults.
As I observe aging individuals struggle with newer technology (myself included), I often hear a nostalgia for simpler times when one’s world was shaped by the morning newspaper, the radio, and phone calls on a landline. I encounter old brains that are confused by the array of tasks that a smartphone can accomplish, having grown up in an analog era when machines were capable of fewer things that often had to be dialed in or set up ahead of time. I also see the confusion, frustration, and overall friction of aging people’s trying to move between photos, texts, and apps on a smartphone. In our fast-paced digital world, there are an increasing number of individuals in their eighties and nineties who are in a functional geropause because they refuse to even consider using computers, smartphones, and the Internet to help communicate with others and manage their life.
On the whole, these individuals are not modern-day Luddites or technophobes. They do not actively reject new technology or its cultural manifestations, such as social media, because they see it as a threat to their worldview. According to Dr. Sarah Czaja, a psychologist and human factors engineer and the director of the Center on Aging at the University of Miami Miller School of Medicine, they may reject it or not engage with it because they do not perceive its potential value or they do not have adequate access or support for setting up and maintaining it. Czaja has learned that aging individuals often have a deeper appreciation for the inherent value of newer technology when they immerse themselves in it and lend their voice to its design and implementation. The depth of their interest contrasts with that of younger people who are enamored by the latest gadget because it is, well, the latest gadget. Technological geropauses will occur, however, when aging individuals lack the self-efficacy to engage with newer technologies or when they are excluded from the development process by ageist attitudes harbored by younger engineers and designers.
Bodi brought his geropause to my doorstep, but he also showed me a way out. It was a long journey, with its roots deep in his personal history. He was born at the end of World War II in Brussels to a Belgian Walloon mother and a Ukrainian expatriate father who had fled the Russian revolution in the early 1920s. His father was an intellectual who preferred reading papers and books to actually working and was not well liked by his mother’s family, to whom he was frequently in debt. His mother was a skilled dressmaker who did her best to keep food on the table during a period of postwar rationing. Bodi remembers his first twelve years growing up in Belgium as full of deprivation, with meager food, little money, and few toys or any other possessions. In 1958, Bodi and his parents and two sisters immigrated to the United States to escape poverty, debt, and the general dislike of his father’s mother’s family. His first memory of arriving on the docks in New York City was finding an errant five-dollar bill and thinking that America was literally paved with money.
His happy discovery was somewhat of a seminal event for Bodi, as he realized that any success in life would have to come through his own eyes and hands. His father was a distant figure who rarely provided for the family or expressed love. His mother was more interactive but not an especially affectionate woman. Nonetheless, she worked hard as a seamstress for the fashion industry, and was the family’s main provider. Bodi recalls her expert ability to copy dress designs from the Paris fashion shows, which made her a highly skilled asset for any house of haute couture.
In high school, Bodi first began working with cameras, and it became his passion. Photography came naturally to him, and he loved to study its techniques and immerse himself in the art and process of developing, going so far as to set up his own basement darkroom. His exceptional talent caught the attention of his art teacher, who mentored and inspired him to consider photography as a profession. On the basis of his impressive portfolio of photographs, Bodi was accepted to the prestigious Art Center College of Design in Pasadena, what he likened to the “Harvard” of photography. Part of his ticket to acceptance was an award-winning photo he took of a statue of Christopher Columbus in Central Park, with the sun bursting from behind its bronze head.
The art college was an incredible opportunity for Bodi but extremely intense, requiring night after night working on excessively detailed projects, many of which didn’t involve the sort of photography that interested him the most. Before too long he ran out of both money and energy, and returned to Manhattan to start pursuing his career in photography. Bodi began working as an assistant to a photographer and then went out on his own as a freelancer. In those years before digital cameras and design software gave everyone access to great technology, Bodi described good photographers as kings, and he was determined to earn his own crown. As he gained experience and made more connections, he slowly but steadily built up his skills and reputation, until he finally got his own Manhattan studio in the mid-1970s.
He focused on advertising work, doing photo illustrations of brands of beauty treatments, coffee, liquor, and many other products. His own style began to replace the generation before him, as he began creating elaborately staged scenes full of color and movement that broke from the staid, Norman Rockwell–like scenes that were now becoming passé. He knew the tricks to getting the lighting just right to bring out the desired colors, and how to coax and capture the exact facial expressions that the art directors imagined. A bevy of celebrities and politicians flowed through his studio—Wilt Chamberlain, Henry Kissinger, and James Earl Jones, among many others. He created both whimsical scenes and dramatic portraits, and traveled the country to conduct elaborate photo shoots. And then in 1982 he signed a huge five-year contract with IBM to create dozens of ads featuring a Charlie Chaplin character interacting with the company’s new personal computer. It was an unparalleled success—so much so that when I first met Bodi and learned about his work, I vividly remembered seeing those ads back in high school and college when I was enamored by the idea of having my own computer. Partly influenced by Bodi’s artistic vision, IBM became the cool computer before Apple’s stylistic takeover.
Bodi soared for about five years before the slow crash began. After a peak in 1984, earnings lessened each year as fewer jobs came his way. He could see styles begin to change. Art directors at the major advertising firms began looking for looser, less staged photos. These changes forced him to reckon with his field: “Advertising is a form of visual lies,” he related to me, “and after a while people associate the style with the lie and it stops working unless, of course, the style is changed. But that’s how I was able to get in because the old guard’s work was going out of style. I displaced a lot of people when I came into it.” Now it was Bodi’s turn to be replaced. Advertising was a harsh field that consumed one generation and spit out the bones when it hungered for something new. Bodi was now the bones.
At first, Bodi became depressed and nearly suicidal, since his work was always the essence of his self-esteem. He studied the new photographic styles and tried to re-create them, making elaborate storybooks to take around to advertising firms. The art directors were impressed, but they didn’t hire him. They cared more about newer styles than experience. He knew what had to be done to capture their interest, but didn’t have the requisite abilities of the younger and fresher artistic brains they were seeking. After many failed attempts to resurrect his studio, Bodi closed shop and set out for something new. He spent several years running art galleries and then working for an art publisher. He had modest success with each endeavor but they ended quickly and didn’t bring the degree of professional success, personal satisfaction, or income that he had previously enjoyed. Bodi was divorced and had a girlfriend for a while but never remarried. He had few funds to travel to New York to visit his daughter and grandchildren on any sort of regular basis.
When Bodi first came to see me, he was feeling restless and barely making ends meet. His financial pressures appeared, more than anything, to trigger nostalgic thoughts for his glory days in Manhattan, when he was enlivened and enriched by his own creativity and feted by the advertising gods of the day. Still, he did not appear to make much progress, and the quiescent embers of his geropause did not reveal themselves. After several years, however, they began to spark.
He mentioned to me that he was working on something new. “What was that?” I inquired—“Can you show me?” Acceding to my request, Bodi came into my office carrying an oversize laptop computer and holding a long, rolled-up canvas under his arm. He looked the part of a hip Miami artist, with a tousled mop of slightly grayed copper brown hair; round red-framed spectacles; and wearing a bright yellow guayabera, white linen pants, and his signature blue suede shoes. He was more relaxed than I had seen him before, and had a look of excitement on his face as he set up the computer on my desk. “I decided that I want to get back into the art world,” he told me. “Why now?” I inquired. “I started thinking that I am ending,” he told me. “Even if I live another twenty years, I am still at the end section of life. And what am I leaving behind? Who will remember me? I just can’t leave like that. I have a need to leave something behind.” Bodi’s existential question here was not “Why age?” or “Why survive?” but a clarion call to himself: “Why thrive?” And his answer—to create something new as his legacy.
He then showed me the artistic creations that were consuming his time and firing dreams of a showing in a gallery one day soon. He had assembled dozens of his photographs from over the years—many of which he had taken as a young man in the early 1970s—and had begun juxtaposing them in pairs onto a single frame. In one shot, for example, a black-and-white photo on the left showed a line of hippos walking into a pool at the Bronx Zoo, while the colorful shot on the right showed a line of women emerging from church in their Sunday finest. In another, a black-and-white photo of a pudgy, smiling baby held up close to the camera was placed next to a color photo of the empty lot of a gas station.
Bodi had begun creating these photographic combinations in a seemingly random manner as a proof, he contends, that you don’t need an inherent relationship between two photos. But he wasn’t satisfied with images alone, and began taking small handwritten snippets from old letters from a previous girlfriend and superimposing them on the collages. As I began reading the added words, it was difficult for me as a psychiatrist with a particularly psychodynamic bent not to begin reading some meaning into Bodi’s “random” combinations. “It’s autobiographical,” he admitted, “but like an unfinished painting. Adding the words makes a difference.” For example, the words added to the baby–gas station collage read: “I’m scared but it’s my chance to do something on my own.” I read those words and one eye sees a smiling baby ready to greet the world and the other sees an empty gas station, its pumps primed to fuel a run. There is fear but also opportunity in this artwork—like the artist in Bodi who is emerging from a long hibernation to begin creating anew. Flashing the same face of joy seen in the photo with George Burns, Bodi unfurled the large canvas emblazoned with one of his photographic creations. It was ready for the gallery wall.
As Bodi began to talk about his art, I could see the end of his geropause: “In the past, I didn’t have the need to do it. Now it feels freer and more positive. It feels great doing it. Even on days that I work all day long on the computer and come out with nothing—it’s still positive.” As he sorts through the photos from his past, he often feels twinges of sadness when he encounters a particularly nostalgic scene, such as one in which he was picking up his young daughter from school. But now the nostalgia is not just soothing him but also fueling his creativity—and this creativity brings him great meaning.
Bodi has discovered the essential answer to the question that nearly every person faces in life. As we age, the many roles, skills, and pursuits in our life change and we must either change with them and look for new ways of thinking and doing, or withdraw into safe and well-worn pathways of a geropause that can freeze us in time, limit us, and yet pose great risks of shattering ourselves or those around us when circumstances demand more than we are able or willing to give. Why should we even attempt to go beyond these perceived limitations and actually thrive? We thrive so as to create something new, which in turn brings great meaning into our lives and those around us.