THE COST
Our culture, politics, businesses, relationships, and even within ourselves bear an unexamined and soundless problem. A costly and injurious problem.

The problem is we are disconnected from our legacy. This estrangement from our heritage has real costs. By separating ourselves from our legacy, problems worsen, threats intensify, and discontent expands within and without.

A legacy is transmitted by or received from an ancestor or predecessor that impacts our humanity. But in our Western techno-savvy, individualistic culture, we have become completely disconnected from the power and value of our predecessors’ experience and wisdom. We’ve lost the channel to our heritage. Worse, we can’t find the remote to regain the channel.

We have become separated from what others have left behind for us to know and understand. Our arrogance is that we believe we don’t need to know because we think we already know. Arrogant of course means having an exaggerated sense of one's own importance or abilities.
 
Knowledge, traditions, values, and cultural inheritances are not passed on when a legacy is not transmitted. When not passed on, subsequent generations miss out on valuable insights, potentially hindering their intellectual and spiritual progress. Knowledge and wisdom gained through experience, failures, and successes wasted.

Legacy plays a crucial role in shaping individual and collective identities. When a legacy is not conveyed, individuals become disconnected from their roots, leading to a loss of identity and a weakened sense of belonging.

Legacy nourished the human roots. Nutrients are needed for a healthy human root system; ancestral knowledge, experience, and wisdom have the highest nutritional value; they access the two main root structures, the root cap (the mind) and the primary root (the heart).

Elders recognize we lack a legacy consciousness in our Western, materialistic, individualistic culture. We don’t live our lives as though every action we take today ultimately leaves its mark downriver.
 
CONTEMPORARY ELDERS AND THEIR LEGACY
“We are a continuum. Just as we reach back to our ancestors for our fundamental values, so we, as guardians of that legacy, must reach ahead to our children and their children. And we do so with a sense of sacredness in that reaching.” – Paul Tsogas

An anchoring attribute of a contemporary elder is we honor our forefather elders' wisdom, contributions, and spirit. We, who are now elders in this space and time, realize we are part of a well-established continuum. A continuum with deep ancestral tracks that are divinely interconnected.
 
As contemporary elders, being part of the elder continuum enhances our equanimity, expands our sense of freedom, allows greater self-expression, and amplifies our ability to contribute.
 
This continuum includes a continuous sequence, an ongoing transfer of wisdom, knowledge, and ‘chi.’ An honorable and sacred exchange, ongoing and reciprocal in nature. It's not a one-time event but a continual process that enriches the lineage of elders. A continuum that sustains the elders' traditional, timeless, and celestial lessons and wisdom. 

As contemporary elders, we stand in the meaning and understanding of our legacy. We hear and hold Buddha, Christ, Krishna, and other spiritual leaders at a foundational level. Their words torque who we as elders are being.

Contemporary elders hear global leaders like Mandela, Gandhi, and Martin Luther King at a cellular level. We hear with our hearts, not just our ears. We hear unconditional truths spoken. These truths our ancestors have spoken for millennia. Lessons that never get old. Lessons that bear repeating. Lessons that use us as much as we use them.

The legacy of all our earlier elders has given us contemporary elders a unique awareness of our mortality. This moral awareness drives us to seek real meaning and purpose in our lives beyond making money, acquiring stuff, and secluding and deluding ourselves from the threats and fears radiating throughout our world today.

The legacy of our yesteryear-elders enables contemporary elders to recognize our souls. That spiritual and immaterial part of being human that is immortal. A soul is as real for elders as your hand or foot.

Expanding recognition of the soul doesn’t stop the screeching of Western psychology and attitudes about life, death, and relationships. The soul just puts these events into a different perspective. A witness rather than a defendant.
 
The legacy of our past elders opens the gate for contemporary elders to a sense of purpose and fulfillment in contributing to something greater than ourselves. It allows us to express our uniqueness, values, and passions, contributing to a broader narrative of our own and other’s human experiences.

The legacy of our prior elders allows us to transcend our individual existence. It provides an opening to provide a sense of continuity, allowing us to feel a very real ancestral and celestial presence.

Elder, as a distinction, now exists in hundreds of conversations across our nation and the globe. I personally participate in some of these national and global conversations. These conversations now have the horsepower to bring “elder” into existence in our Western culture.

Many groups, enterprises, organizations, conferences, books, videos (TED and YouTube), podcasts, and Websites now exist on being or becoming an elder. Many of my cohorts are now highly visible, unconditionally committed, and fully engaged in having elders sit at the table where decisions are made.

We, elders, are crossing the chasm from the unrecognized to the real. On the other side of the chasm is the cultural mainland. The Contemporary Elder Institute is among those committed rowers on the U.S. Elder boat making the crossing. We are now approaching the shoreline and getting ready to disembark.

As Victor Hugo's quote, which is often repeated, “There is nothing more powerful than an idea whose time has come.” Elder is now a time that’s come. In fact, it’s here. And what puts the power in our rowing strokes is the legacy of our forebearers.