Sangha of Auspicious Companions

At 96, the ‘Third Part of Life’ May Be the Best of All

At 96 years-old, Alice McGinty does resistance training three times a week, travels to Costa Rican jungles, and shows her paintings — work that has grown more vivid and abstract since macular degeneration narrowed her world to color alone. What she is pushing against is quieter than any of that: “It is subtle and unspoken,” she says of the dismissal she feels. “It is a quietness.” McGinty has named something many older people sense but rarely have the platform to articulate — that society’s silence around the later decades of life is its own kind of message, and that refusing to receive it is a form of courage. Perhaps the most striking thing she offers isn’t her yoga practice or her Instagram following, but this hard-won interior shift: “I have learned how to trust myself … perhaps one of the greatest gifts of getting older is realizing that trusting myself isn’t selfish; it is finally becoming someone I can count on.” She is not waiting to be studied, supported, or seen — she is simply, insistently, living.

Be The Change

Think of someone in your life who is at the edges of your daily world. Reach out to them today, and genuinely ask what they’re learning or excited about right now.