Lifespan by Erma M. Cuizon (Originally published in Sun Star Cebu’s Sun Star Essay, Saturday, November 8, 2014 issue)

I WENT to buy medicines I maintain these days at my age and found a line in the senior area. I told myself I shouldn’t have come near noon because the senior citizen line is longer. Sure, there are seats for seniors but the wait could be sort of killing to an impatient one. I sighed aloud as I took my seat to wait for my turn. The woman seated next to me smiled and asked, “Excuse me, how old are you?”

Lighting up, I quickly told her my age because I have been told many times that I don’t look it. Then the woman said she’s older than me, at 86. Later, she’d say that she’s always told in happy confirmation that she doesn’t look her age.

They're right, Virginia Fidellaga doesn’t look her age, she looks only over 60.

A former education district supervisor, Virginia is part of a family of 12 children—6 boys and 6 girls. The other female children in her family are her siblings still enjoying life with loved ones—one sister at 90 years old, then another at 88, she herself at 86, another sister at 84, and 82, all five appreciating life. The sixth female daughter, second to the eldest child, died at the age of 93. Virginia says it’s probably in the genes of her mother Gregoria who died years ago at age 83.

After she retired, Virginia took it easy in a long vacation and had enjoyable trips abroad with her own family. She played yaya to a grandchild in the U.S. and stayed there for 23 years, coming back to Cebu yearly for a month in the home country each year until she came back home to stay in 2012.

But not all senior citizen lifestyle is like Virginia's. The body depreciates, even if the outlook is poignant in a life with less stress. There is a need for medicines, as life’s retirement funds run out.

What to do with senior citizens as their number grows worldwide?

The government has reached out to keep aging citizens safe, keep them feel at home and still welcomed by their families and community. In the Philippines, the government has been trying to help make senior life still meaningful. There's the Expanded Senior Citizens Act, the PhilHealth coverage and more benefits, rights and privileges, such as discounts for senior citizens as consumers, as medical patients.

And there are groups appreciative of the contribution of senior citizens to the community who go out of their way to help. Like the Cebu City Government which recently awarded 4 centenarians P100,000 each for their life span reaching a century in terms of life longevity. When the life span grows, as it has been growing in the world, there would be the bigger problem of what to do to enable seniors still to be part of community life.

An ageing research center in Denmark shows that lifespan will continue to grow in the number of years “indefinitely.” In Britain, half of the children born in 2000 will live up to 100 years old. But it is in Japan where half of the babies born in 2007 will live up to 107 years old.

In England and Wales, one in every 100 people reached the age of 90 in 2011. Next year, there will be more than a million people still living up to 90. In the UK, half of British children who were born in 2000 will live past 100 years.

Not far in time, we’d have among us more nonagenarians, or seniors from age 90 to 99 years, besides the centenarians, or at age 100 and beyond. But, of course, we'd have more problems if we were like worms identified as “caenorhabitis elegans” who live up to what we know in human lifespan as the age of from 400 to 500 years!

Modern medication in the 20th century has led people to eat healthily and work safely, not to talk of the genetic factor. A research in 2012 shows that the Filipinos' life expectancy at birth is 65/72.

Of longevity in life, someone like Virginia’s late mother put it more meaningfully when she would watch over her dozen children during meal time, making sure they were eating healthily.

The mother kept saying, “Magkaon gani, dili agdon ang baba. Kon wa na gani gutoma, husto na kay maoray atong gikinanghanglan.”

RSA Animate - Changing Education Paradigms

Philip Zimbardo: The Secret Powers of Time (Animated)

Philip Zimbardo: The Secret Powers of Time (Animated) from The RSA on FORA.tv

posted by Alice Cuenca

The Case Against Competition By Alfie Kohn

contributed by Bason Di-ay

When it comes to competition, we Americans typically recognize only two legitimate positions: enthusiastic support and qualified support.

The first view holds that the more we immerse our children (and ourselves) in rivalry, the better. Competition builds character and produces excellence. The second stance admits that our society has gotten carried away with the need to be Number One, that we push our kids too hard and too fast to become winners -- but insists that competition can be healthy and fun if we keep it in perspective.

I used to be in the second camp. But after investigating the topic for several years, looking at research from psychology, sociology, biology, education, and other fields, I'm now convinced that neither position is correct. Competition is bad news all right, but it's not just that we overdo it or misapply it. The trouble lies with competition itself. The best amount of competition for our children is none at all, and the very phrase "healthy competition" is actually a contradiction in terms.

That may sound extreme if not downright un-American. But some things aren't just bad because they're done to excess; some things are inherently destructive. Competition, which simply means that one person can succeed only if others fail, is one of those things. It's always unnecessary and inappropriate at school, at play, and at home.

Think for a moment about the goals you have for your children. Chances are you want them to develop healthy self-esteem, to accept themselves as basically good people. You want them to become successful, to achieve the excellence of which they're capable. You want them to have loving and supportive relationships. And you want them to enjoy themselves.

These are fine goals. But competition not only isn't necessary for reaching them -- it actually undermines them.

Competition is to self-esteem as sugar is to teeth. Most people lose in most competitive encounters, and it's obvious why that causes self-doubt. But even winning doesn't build character; it just lets a child gloat temporarily. Studies have shown that feelings of self-worth become dependent on external sources of evaluation as a result of competition: Your value is defined by what you've done. Worse -- you're a good person in proportion to the number of people you've beaten.

In a competitive culture, a child is told that it isn't enough to be good -- he must triumph over others. Success comes to be defined as victory, even though these are really two very different things. Even when the child manages to win, the whole affair, psychologically speaking, becomes a vicious circle: The more he competes, the more he needs to compete to feel good about himself.

When I made this point on a talk show on national television, my objections were waved aside by the parents of a seven-year-old tennis champion named Kyle, who appeared on the program with me. Kyle had been used to winning ever since a tennis racket was put in his hands at the age of two. But at the very end of the show, someone in the audience asked him how he felt when he lost. Kyle lowered his head and in a small voice replied, "Ashamed."

This is not to say that children shouldn't learn discipline and tenacity, that they shouldn't be encouraged to succeed or even have a nodding acquaintance with failure. But none of these requires winning and losing -- that is, having to beat other children and worry about being beaten. When classrooms and playing fields are based on cooperation rather than competition, children feel better about themselves. They work with others instead of against them, and their self-esteem doesn't depend on winning a spelling bee or a Little League game.

Children succeed in spite of competition, not because of it. Most of us were raised to believe that we do our best work when we're in a race -- that without competition we would all become fat, lazy, and mediocre. It's a belief that our society takes on faith. It's also false.

There is good evidence that productivity in the workplace suffers as a result of competition. The research is even more compelling in classroom settings. David Johnson, a professor of social psychology at the University of Minnesota, and his colleagues reviewed all the studies they could find on the subject from 1924 to 1980. Sixty-five of the studies found that children learn better when they work cooperatively as opposed to competitively, eight found the reverse, and 36 found no significant difference. The more complex the learning task, the worse children in a competitive environment fared.

Brandeis University psychologist Teresa Amabile was more interested in creativity. In a study, she asked children to make "silly collages." Some competed for prizes and some didn't. Seven artists then independently rated the kids' work. It turned out that those who were trying to win produced collages that were much less creative -- less spontaneous, complex and varied -- than the others.

One after another, researchers across the country have concluded that children do not learn better when education is transformed into a competitive struggle. Why? First, competition often makes kids anxious and that interferes with concentration. Second, competition doesn't permit them to share their talents and resources as cooperation does, so they can't learn from one another. Finally, trying to be Number One distracts them from what they're supposed to be learning. It may seem paradoxical, but when a student concentrates on the reward (an A or a gold star or a trophy), she becomes less interested in what she's doing. The result: Performance declines.

Just because forcing children to try to outdo one another is counterproductive doesn't mean they can't keep track of how they're doing. There's no problem with comparing their achievements to an objective standard (how fast they ran, how many questions they got right) or to how they did yesterday or last year. But if we value our children's intellectual development, we need to realize that turning learning into a race simply doesn't work.

Competition is a recipe for hostility. By definition, not everyone can win a contest. If one child wins, another cannot. This means that each child comes to regard others as obstacles to his or her own success. Forget fractions or home runs; this is the real lesson our children learn in a competitive environment.

Competition leads children to envy winners, to dismiss losers (there's no nastier epithet in our language than "Loser!"), and to be suspicious of just about everyone. Competition makes it difficult to regard others as potential friends or collaborators; even if you're not my rival today, you could be tomorrow.

This is not to say that competitors will always detest each other. But trying to outdo someone is not conducive to trust -- indeed, it would be irrational to trust someone who gains from your failure. At best, competition leads one to look at others through narrowed eyes; at worst, it invites outright aggression. Existing relationships are strained to the breaking point, while new friendships are often nipped in the bud.

Again, the research -- which I review in my book No Contest: The Case Against Competition -- helps to explain the destructive effect of win/lose arrangements. When children compete, they are less able to take the perspective of others -- that is, to see the world from someone else's point of view. One study demonstrated conclusively that competitive children were less empathetic than others; another study showed that competitive children were less generous.

Cooperation, on the other hand, is marvelously successful at helping children to communicate effectively, to trust in others and to accept those who are different from themselves. Competition interferes with these goals and often results in outright antisocial behavior. The choice is ours: We can blame the individual children who cheat, turn violent, or withdraw, or we can face the fact that competition itself is responsible for such ugliness.

Studies also show, incidentally, that competition among groups isn't any better than competition among individuals. Kids don't have to work against a common enemy in order to know the joys of camaraderie or to experience success. Real cooperation doesn't require triumphing over another group.

Having fun doesn't mean turning playing fields into battlefields. It's remarkable, when you stop to think about it, that the way we teach our kids to have a good time is to play highly structured games in which one individual or team must defeat another.

Consider one of the first games our children learn to play: musical chairs. Take away one chair and one child in each round until one smug winner is seated and everyone else has been excluded from play. You know that sour birthday party scene; the needle is lifted from the record and someone else is transformed into a loser, forced to sit out the rest of the game with the other unhappy kids on the side. That's how children learn to have fun in America.

Terry Orlick, a Canadian expert on games, suggests changing the goal of musical chairs so children are asked to fit on a diminishing number of seats. At the end, seven or eight giggling, happy kids are trying to squish on a single chair. Everyone has fun and there are no winners or losers.

What's true of musical chairs is true of all recreation; with a little ingenuity, we can devise games in which the obstacle is something intrinsic to the task itself rather than another person or team.

In fact, not one of the benefits attributed to sports or other competitive games actually requires competition. Children can get plenty of exercise without struggling against each other. Teamwork? Cooperative games allow everyone to work together, without creating enemies. Improving skills and setting challenges? Again, an objective standard or one's own earlier performance will do.

When Orlick taught a group of children noncompetitive games, two thirds of the boys and all of the girls preferred them to games that require opponents. If our culture's idea of a good time is competition, it may just be because we haven't tried the alternative.

How can parents raise a noncompetitive child in a competitive world?Competition is destructive to children's self-esteem, it interferes with learning, sabotages relationships, and isn't necessary to have a good time. But how do you raise a child in a culture that hasn't yet caught on to all this?

There are no easy answers here. But there is one clearly unsatisfactory answer: Make your son or daughter competitive in order to fit into the "real world." That isn't desirable for the child -- for all the reasons given here -- and it perpetuates the poison of competition in another generation.

Children can be taught about competition, prepared for the destructive forces they'll encounter, without being groomed to take part in it uncritically. They can be exposed to the case against competition just as they are taught the harms of drug abuse or reckless driving.

You will have to decide how much compromise is appropriate so your child isn't left out or ridiculed in a competitive society. But at least you can make your decision based on knowledge about competition's destructiveness. You can work with other parents and with your child's teachers and coaches to help change the structures that set children against one another. Or you may want to look into cooperative schools and summer camps, which are beginning to catch on around the country.

As for reducing rivalry and competitive attitudes in the home:

• Avoid comparing a child's performance to that of a sibling, a classmate, or yourself as a child.
• Don't use contests ("Who can dry the dishes fastest?") around the house. Watch your use of language ("Who's the best little girl in the whole wide world?") that reinforces competitive attitudes.
• Never make your love or acceptance conditional on a child's performance. It's not enough to say, "As long as you did your best, honey" if the child learns that Mommy's attitude about her is quite different when she has triumphed over her peers.
• Be aware of your power as a model. If you need to beat others, your child will learn that from you regardless of what you say. The lesson will be even stronger if you use your child to provide you with vicarious victories.

Raising healthy, happy, productive children goes hand in hand with creating a better society. The first step to achieving both is recognizing that our belief in the value of competition is built on myths. There are better ways for our children -- and for us -- to work and play and live.

From the Editor's Inbox: The Strangest Secret

An excerpt from
The Strangest Secret
by Earl Nightingale
George Bernard Shaw said, "People are always blaming their circumstances for what they are. I don't believe in circumstances. The people who get on in this world are the people who get up and look for the circumstances they want, and if they can't find them, they make them."

Well, it's pretty apparent, isn't it? And every person who discovered this believed (for a while) that he was the first one to work it out. We become what we think about.

Conversely, the person who has no goal, who doesn't know where he's going, and whose thoughts must therefore be thoughts of confusion, anxiety and worry - his life becomes one of frustration, fear, anxiety and worry. And if he thinks about nothing... he becomes nothing.

How does it work? Why do we become what we think about? Well, I'll tell you how it works, as far as we know. To do this, I want to tell you about a situation that parallels the human mind.

Suppose a farmer has some land, and it's good, fertile land. The land gives the farmer a choice; he may plant in that land whatever he chooses. The land doesn't care. It's up to the farmer to make the decision.

We're comparing the human mind with the land because the mind, like the land, doesn't care what you plant in it. It will return what you plant, but it doesn't care what you plant.

Now, let's say that the farmer has two seeds in his hand- one is a seed of corn, the other is nightshade, a deadly poison. He digs two little holes in the earth and he plants both seeds-one corn, the other nightshade. He covers up the holes, waters and takes care of the land...and what will happen? Invariably, the land will return what was planted.

As it's written in the Bible, "As ye sow, so shall ye reap."

Remember the land doesn't care. It will return poison in just as wonderful abundance as it will corn. So up come the two plants - one corn, one poison.

The human mind is far more fertile, far more incredible and mysterious than the land, but it works the same way. It doesn't care what we plant...success...or failure. A concrete, worthwhile goal...or confusion, misunderstanding, fear, anxiety and so on. But what we plant must return to us.

You see, the human mind is the last great unexplored continent on earth. It contains riches beyond our wildest dreams. It will return anything we want to plant.

A movie that shares the 7 rules for staying positive...

From the Editor's Inbox: Attitude is Everything

A movie from Simple Truths: Attitude is Everything If you received this email from a friend, don't forget to sign up for our free newsletter. A movie that shares the 7 rules for staying positive... Attitudes are contagious...is yours worth catching? To be honest, sometimes my answer is "no"...and that's about the time that I need to check my attitude. Well, that's the motivation behind this movie...a booster shot for your attitude! Just click here to learn the 7 rules for staying positive. Don't forget to pay it forward by sharing this email with friends, family, and co-workers. They'll thank you for it! To Life, Mac Anderson Founder, Simple Truths Contact Us Simple Truths, LLC., 1952 McDowell Road, Ste. 300, Naperville, IL 60563, USA Phone: 800-900-3427 / 630-946-1460 © 2011, Simple Truths, LLC. All rights reserved.

Pay the Full Price

By Stephen Covey

The principle of "paying the uttermost farthing" is to apologize when you make a mistake or fail to meet expectations and then to behave better.

An executive once told me: "My biggest worry and concern is my poor relationship with my most creative people at work and with my teenage son at home. In the past, I have lost my temper and yelled at them. How can I improve these relationships and change the image they have of me?".

There is no greater heartbreak for leaders than to feel they are losing or have lost influence with people they most want and need to lead. Fortunately, no situation is hopeless. There are several powerful ways to heal a broken relationship, to restore the emotional bank account, and to have positive influence again.

Consider carefully what was taught in the Sermon on the Mount: "Agree with thine adversary quickly, whilst thou art in the way with him; lest at any time the adversary deliver thee to the judge, and the judge deliver thee to the officer, and thou be cast into prison. Thou shalt by no means come out thence, till thou hast paid the uttermost farthing."

The Uttermost Farthing


People often get offended or they offend others and then neither party has the humility to take full responsibility for their part. Instead, they rationalize and justify themselves. A collusion then occurs as they look for evidence to support the perception of the other person, and that only aggravates the original problem. Ultimately, they put each other in a mental-emotional prison.

You can't come out of prison until you pay the uttermost farthing. The "uttermost farthing" means exactly that the uttermost, not the first, second, or third. It means a humble and complete acknowledgment of your responsibility for the problem, even though the other was partly responsible as well. If you take full responsibility for your part in it and acknowledge it and apologize out of deep sincerity and concession of spirit the other person will sense the utter sincerity of what you say.

Of course, your behavior must then comport with that expression so that others can see your integrity. Paying the uttermost farthing requires behavior consistent with the apology over a period of time, because your emotional bank account with that person may be so overdrawn that no apology will redeem it.

You have to do much more. You have to show your sincerity. You can't talk yourself out of problems you behave yourself into particularly if you're constantly apologizing, but your behavior pattern an style remain unchanged.

If you pay only the first farthing expecting other people to also acknowledge their part and their responsibility, that is insufficient. The other person may pay on farthing with the attitude, "Well, I'm sorry, but it's not all one way. You've been a party to this thing as well." But he won't pay a second farthing until you pay the uttermost farthing.

To pay the uttermost farthing, you might say, "I was wrong." "I embarrassed you in front of your friends." Or, "I cut you off in that meeting, when you had made this tremendous preparation. And I'm not only going to apologize to you, but also to the other people who were in that meeting.

Because they could see the way I dealt with you, and it offended them as well." You make no effort to justify, explain, defend, or blame in any way, only an effort to pay the uttermost farthing in order to get out of prison. What happens when you pay the full price? Assume, to begin with, that relationships are strained and that you are at least partly responsible. If you merely try to be better and not to confess and apologize, the other person will still be suspicious. He has been hurt and wounded; therefore, his guard is up. He will question your new behavior, your "kind face," and wonder what might happen next. Your improved behavior and manner won't assuage his distrust. Nothing you can do will change it, because you are behind bars and walls in a prison of his own making in his mind. The bars and walls are the mental and emotional labels that he has put upon you. Only by making a complete, and specific acknowledgment of your own failings or mistakes do you break down these bars.

The Principle in Practice


I constantly rediscover the efficacy of this age-old principle in my work with people who are low in desire and responsibility and who tend to blame others for their poor performance.

Once I worked with a young man who was barely getting along in the organization I was leading. I labeled him as an underachiever, and for months, every time I saw his face or heard his name, I would think of him in this way.

I became aware of how I had labeled him and how this label had become a self-fulfilling prophecy. I realized that people tend to become like you treat them or believe them to be. I decided that I needed to "pay the uttermost farthing." I went to this young man, confessed what I believed had happened and how I had played a role, and asked for his forgiveness.

Our relationship began on a new base of honesty. Gradually he "came to himself" and began to build more internal controls; he then performed magnificently.

The "uttermost" price must be paid to the last ones who keep you in their mental-emotional prison, where they label you and where they look for evidence to support their label. Labeling defends and protects their ego, thus making them less vulnerable. That's why they're not willing to pay even one farthing, let alone the uttermost one, because it makes them too vulnerable too exposed to rejection, exploitation, or manipulation.

The theme of many novels is unrequited love, where people simply refuse to love unconditionally because they've been wounded and hurt before. And so they recoil and defend themselves by going inside and being cynical, suspicious, or sarcastic.They're not open because they don't want to be vulnerable.

I once told my daughter, after she had been hurt in a relationship, "Be sure you maintain your vulnerability." She said, "Why? It hurts too much." And I said, "Well, you don't need to get your security from that relationship. If you get your security from your integrity toward timeless principles, you can still maintain your vulnerability. That's what makes you beautiful and lovely you willingness to be open and authentic. If you reject other people and new opportunity on the basis of having been rejected, you will build a shell around yourself that will keep you from being loved. One of the lovely things about you is your willingness to trust and to risk being hurt."

Clearing the Legal Hurdle


Many people face a legal barrier to paying the uttermost farthing. For example some lawyers might caution their clients against making any form of apologies, but to maintain "100 percent" innocence, because apologizing to anyone might imply guilt.

Many executives have their own thinking straight-jacketed by legalities and by an attorney's mind-set. While protection is prudent in some cases, thinking like a lawyer contributes to future problems. It's like drafting a pre-marital contract: "In the event we have a divorce, this is how we'll settle the estate." Such contracts may actually contribute to a break-up. They may be, but they're not idealistic. And if we abandon our ideals, we abandon the essence of our humanity our ability to rise above tendencies of protectiveness and defensiveness.

As we develop a legal mind-set, we imagine worst-case scenarios, assume the worst of other people, and seek evidence to justify our position. Such thinking becomes a causal, contributing force of adversarialism. We need to work with attorneys who have the ability to transcend the legal mindset who know when and how to properly apply their skills but who have a more positive attitude toward life and people.

Many problems can be resolved by executives and their business partners, if only someone would admit up front, "I was wrong." For example, I once met with a chief executive who said that the union had walked out of an important meeting with him earlier that day. I asked, "Why?" He admitted that the company had mistreated some union member but that it was a "very minor issue."

I said, "Well, to that union, their mission is your minutiae. And you've got to apologize. If you're wrong, you've got to acknowledge it, right now, today. Don't go another hour. Call them up at once while you are still on speaking terms."

The chief executive did as I suggested, and his sincere apology was well received by the union leaders; in fact, it caused them to come back to the meeting.

I'm convinced that this principle will work wonders to resolve differences, heal relationships, settle strikes, and foster international business deals. When a relationship is formed between people on a very personal level, the spirit of paying the uttermost farthing is stirred up. People say, "I was wrong on that. I apologize, and I want to make it up to you."

Paying the uttermost farthing also means making the effort to get to know the other person better. In some languages, "enemy" and "stranger" are the same word. By getting to know our "enemies" on a very personal level, they will cease being strangers. Little by little, we create a culture of civility and charity where members know that each person has weaknesses, but they have the humility, authenticity, and honesty to onfess them and to try to compensate for them.

Six Points

When applying this principle to any seriously broken or strained relationship, I emphasize six points.

1. We may honestly admit to ourselves that we are at least partly to blame for the problem. Upon reflection, we can see how we embarrassed, insulted, or belittled another, or how we failed to understand, or how we were inconsistent in discipline or conditional in love. Often what happens when leaders fail to pay the uttermost farthing is that they lose their moral authority. Moral authority makes up much of the power we have as where there are many knowledge-workers. In an information world, you can't throw your weight around. Your moral authority is the most powerful thing you've got.
2. When one is deeply hurt or embarrassed, he draws back and closes up. He expects nothing to avoid being disappointed. He simply refuses to believe us, to open up, to "release" us from the mental prison he has us in. To avoid future hurt, he judges us as unkind, unfair, or not understanding, and puts us behind prison bars.
3. Improving our behavior alone won't release us from this prison, simply because he can't afford to trust us again. It's too risky. He's suspicious of this new behavior, this new face, this "insincere" entreaty. "I trusted him before and look what happened." Although inside he is crying out for direction and emotional support he will still keep us in his mental prison for an indeterminate sentence.
4. Often the only way out is to go to him and admit our mistakes, apologize, and ask forgiveness. In this reconciliation we must be specific in describing what we did that was wrong. We make no excuses, apologies, explanations, or defenses. We simply acknowledge that we know we did wrong, we understand what put us in prison, and we want to pay the price of release. If we only make a stab at this process but inwardly hold back by saying, "He should be sorry also I can only go so far but no further until he acknowledges his part," then our peace-making is superficial, insincere, and manipulative. Under the surface, the suspicion and turbulence still rage as the next stress on the relationship will reveal.
5. This approach must be utterly sincere and not used as a manipulative technique to bring the other around. If this approach is used onlybecause it works, it will boomerang. Unless sincere change takes place deep within us sooner or later we'll trespass again on tender feelings, and the new mental prison will have thicker walls than ever. Others simply will not believe us when we say again how sorry we are. Repeated token repentance wins no confidence or forgiveness.
In most situations, paying the uttermost farthing works not only to obtain a release from "prison" with its new opportunity to communicate and to influence, but also to inspire, not force, others to make some hard admissions and resolves also. Pride often keeps us from paying the uttermost farthing, but eventually we must swallow our pride, express our sorrow apologize, and seek forgiveness.


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