Such activities and dreams as these never go away as we lived through our 30’s and 40’s. Instead, we stuck them in a back room, and they were only faintly heard. We filled the main psychic rooms in which we lived with many people, including our spouse, children, colleagues, friends, and business associates. Our living room, in particular, was rather noisy. We had very little time to hear, let alone listen to, these faint voices emanating from other rooms. If we heard them at all, the voices often appeared to be “young and foolish.” They seemed to come from another time and place in our life.
These voices, however, never went away; now in late midlife our living room is not as crowded or as noisy. We have more time to hear these voices from other rooms and are less often distracted than we were during our 20’s, 30’s, and 40’s. We can listen to our coach. Furthermore, many events are now occurring in our lives that repeatedly remind us of these faint voices from our past. Strange and unpredictable events seem to resonate with these past activities and dreams, and they often lead us to the third and fourth role of generativity: the preservation of heritage and civic engagement.
Precipitating Events and Strange Attractors: One of Samuel’s accounting clients hosted a 60s rock, roll and remembrance party several years ago. This is a lovely example of Generativity Three (Preservation of Heritage). His client had asked him if he ever played in a rock and roll band, and especially as a drummer. Dr. Jane’s practice as a physician is successful, but her own family doctor has forcefully told her to get more exercise. Jane just moved to a community with an active adult recreation program that features an “old boys” and an “old girls” basketball league. In joining and playing on one of the new “old girl” teams, Jane is suddenly involved with Generativity Four (Civic Engagement).
The wife of Ricardo, our would-be shopper and chef, just received a promotion and will have to travel in her new job. Now in her mid-Sixties, she got started late in her career and has no intention of retiring any time soon. She wants to make up for “lost time” and hesitantly asks Ricardo, who is now retired, if he wouldn’t mind doing more of the cooking for himself and each other during weekends. She makes her request only two months after a new gourmet supermarket opened at the local mall, and it features a Saturday morning farmer’s market. Ricardo now has an opportunity for making-up for his own “lost time” with Generativity One caring (through cooking) for his own family. Ricardo wants to take it further. He has met with the manager of the supermarket and hopes to provide cooking classes for men in his local community—moving him from Generativity One to Generativity Four.
It may seem that these examples are but a remarkable coincidence. However, there is a term that was fashionable several years ago that is appropriate in describing this type of coincidence. This word is Synergy. Scientists also have a name and explanation for this phenomenon: Strange Attractor. Those doing research on chaotic systems note that there are many events in nature that seem to pull in energy from outside and establish very powerful, compelling, and repetitive patterns. These chaos theorists suggest that most events occur in a random manner. One particular event, however, happens to have a slightly greater impact at a particular place and time than do other random events. As a result of this one slightly more impactful event, the other random events tend to orient around this “strange attractor” event. They become aligned with the orienting event, and a system is established.
