{"product_id":"prime-time-isbn-9780812978582","title":"Prime Time","description":"\u003cp\u003e\u003cb\u003e\u003ci\u003eNEW YORK TIMES \u003c\/i\u003eBESTSELLER\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e \u003cb\u003e \u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e \u003ci\u003eAn A-to-Z guide to living and aging well by #1 bestselling author, actress, and workout pioneer Jane Fonda\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e \u003cb\u003e \u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e In this unique, candid, and inspiring book, Jane Fonda explores how midlife and beyond can be the time when we become our most energetic, loving, and fulfilled selves. Highlighting new research and sharing stories from her own life and from the lives of others, she outlines the 11 key ingredients to vitality—from exercise and diet, to forging new pathways in the brain, to loving, staying connected, and giving of oneself. She explains how performing a life review helped her clarify goals and move ahead, and shows how we can do this too. In \u003ci\u003ePrime Time,\u003c\/i\u003e Jane Fonda offers an empowering vision for how to live your best life, for all of your life.\u003c\/p\u003e“Reassuring . . . upbeat . . . \u003ci\u003ePrime Time\u003c\/i\u003e is part autobiographical confessional, part life advice, the two intertwined, so that reading the book is often like talking to a friend.”—\u003ci\u003eLos Angeles Times\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e  \u003cbr\u003e “A how-to book about being happy and self-aware [that] cites research and interviews with upbeat, lively, sexually active older people to extract some all-purpose lessons about endurance.”—\u003ci\u003eThe New York Times\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e  \u003cbr\u003e “Warm, informative, and incredibly life affirming.”—\u003ci\u003eWoman’s Day\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e“Read this, age gracefully.”—\u003ci\u003eInStyle\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cp\u003e\u003cb\u003eJane Fonda \u003c\/b\u003eis an Oscar- and Emmy-winning actress and highly successful producer. She revolutionized the fitness industry with the Jane Fonda Workout in 1982 and has sold more than seventeen million copies of her fitness-focused books, videos, and recordings. She is involved with several causes and is the founder of both the Georgia Campaign for Adolescent Pregnancy Prevention and the Jane Fonda Center at Emory University. She is the author of the #1 \u003ci\u003eNew York Times\u003c\/i\u003e bestseller \u003ci\u003eMy Life So Far,\u003c\/i\u003e and she received a Tony nomination in 2009 for her role in \u003ci\u003e33 Variations\u003c\/i\u003e. She lives in Los Angeles.\u003c\/p\u003ePREFACE\u003cbr\u003e  \u003cbr\u003e The Arch and the Staircase\u003cbr\u003e The past empowers the present, and the groping\u003cbr\u003e footsteps leading to this present mark the pathways\u003cbr\u003e to the future.\u003cbr\u003e —Mary Catherine Bateson\u003cbr\u003e  \u003cbr\u003e Several years ago, i was coming to the end of my sixties\u003cbr\u003e and facing my seventies, the second decade of what I thought of as\u003cbr\u003e the Third Act of my life— Act III, which, as I see it, begins at age\u003cbr\u003e sixty. I was worried. Being in my sixties was one thing. Given good\u003cbr\u003e health, we can fudge our sixties. But seventy—now, that’s serious.\u003cbr\u003e In our grandparents’ time, people in their seventies were considered\u003cbr\u003e part of the “old old” . . . on their way out.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e However, a revolution has occurred within the last century—\u003cbr\u003e a longevity revolution. Studies show that, on average, thirty- four\u003cbr\u003e years have been added to human life expectancy, moving it from an\u003cbr\u003e average of forty- six years to eighty! This addition represents an\u003cbr\u003e entire second adult lifetime, and whether we choose to confront it\u003cbr\u003e or not, it changes everything, including what it means to be human.\u003cbr\u003e  \u003cbr\u003e \u003ci\u003eAdding a Room\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e \u003ci\u003e \u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e The social anthropologist (and a friend of mine) Mary Catherine\u003cbr\u003e Bateson has a metaphor for living with this longer life span in view.\u003cbr\u003e She writes in her recent book \u003ci\u003eComposing a Further Life: The Age of Active\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e \u003ci\u003eWisdom, \u003c\/i\u003e“We have not added decades to life expectancy by simply\u003cbr\u003e extending old age; instead, we have opened up a new space partway\u003cbr\u003e through the life course, a second and different kind of adulthood\u003cbr\u003e that precedes old age, and as a result every stage of life is undergoing\u003cbr\u003e change.” Bateson uses the identifi able metaphor of what happens\u003cbr\u003e when a new room is added to your home. It isn’t just the new\u003cbr\u003e room that is different; every other part of the house and how it is\u003cbr\u003e used is altered a bit by the addition of this room.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e In the house that is our life, things such as planning, marriage,\u003cbr\u003e love, fi nances, parenting, travel, education, physical fi tness, work,\u003cbr\u003e retirement—our very identities, even!—all take on new meaning\u003cbr\u003e now that we can expect to be vital into our eighties and nineties\u003cbr\u003e . . . or longer.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e But our culture has not come to grips with the ways the longevity\u003cbr\u003e revolution has altered our lives. Institutionally, so much of how\u003cbr\u003e we do things is the same as it was early in the twentieth century,\u003cbr\u003e with our lives segregated into age- specifi c silos: During the fi rst\u003cbr\u003e third we learn, during the second third we produce, and the last\u003cbr\u003e third we presumably spend on leisure. Consider, instead, how it\u003cbr\u003e would look if we tore down the silos and integrated the activities.\u003cbr\u003e For example, let’s begin to think of learning and working as a lifelong\u003cbr\u003e challenge instead of something that ends when you retire.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e What if the wonderfully empowering feeling of being productive\u003cbr\u003e can be experienced by children early in life, and if they know from\u003cbr\u003e fi rst grade that education will be an expected part of their entire\u003cbr\u003e lives? What if the second, traditionally productive silo is braided\u003cbr\u003e with leisure and education? And seniors, with twenty or more productive\u003cbr\u003e years left, can enjoy leisure time while remaining in the\u003cbr\u003e workforce in some form and attending to education if for no other\u003cbr\u003e reason than to challenge their minds? Envisioned this way, longevity\u003cbr\u003e becomes like a symphony with echoes of different times recurring\u003cbr\u003e with slight modifi cations, as in music, across the life arc.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e Except that we don’t have the sheet music to this new symphony.\u003cbr\u003e We— today’s boomers and seniors— are the pioneer generations,\u003cbr\u003e the ones who need to compose together a template for how\u003cbr\u003e to maximize the potential of this amazing gift of time, so as to\u003cbr\u003e become whole, fully realized people over the longer life arc.\u003cbr\u003e In attempting to chart a course for myself into my sixties and\u003cbr\u003e beyond, I’ve found it helpful to view the symphony of my own life\u003cbr\u003e in three acts, or three major developmental stages: Act I, the fi rst\u003cbr\u003e three decades; Act II, the middle three decades; and Act III, the\u003cbr\u003e fi nal three decades (or however many more years one is granted).\u003cbr\u003e As I searched for ways to understand the new realities of aging,\u003cbr\u003e I discovered the arch and the staircase.\u003cbr\u003e  \u003cbr\u003e \u003ci\u003eThe Arch and the Staircase\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e \u003ci\u003e \u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e Here you see two diagrams that I have had drawn, because they\u003cbr\u003e make visualizable two conceptions of human life that have come to\u003cbr\u003e mean a lot to me.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e One diagram, the arch, represents a biological concept, taking\u003cbr\u003e us from childhood to a middle peak of maturity, followed by a\u003cbr\u003e decline into infi rmity.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e The other, a staircase, shows our potential for upward progression\u003cbr\u003e toward wisdom, spiritual growth, learning— toward, in other\u003cbr\u003e words, consciousness and soul.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e The vision behind these diagrams was developed by Rudolf Arnheim,\u003cbr\u003e the late professor emeritus of the psychology of art at Harvard\u003cbr\u003e University, and for me they are clear metaphors for ways we can choose\u003cbr\u003e to view aging. Our youth- obsessed culture encourages us to focus\u003cbr\u003e on the arch—age as physical decline— more than on the stairway— age\u003cbr\u003e as potential for continued development and ascent. But it is the stairway\u003cbr\u003e that points to late life’s promise, even in the face of physical\u003cbr\u003e decline. Perhaps it should be a spiral staircase! Because the wisdom,\u003cbr\u003e balance, refl ection, and compassion that this upward movement represents\u003cbr\u003e don’t just come to us in one linear ascension; they circle around\u003cbr\u003e us, beckoning us to keep climbing, to keep looking both back and\u003cbr\u003e ahead.\u003cbr\u003e  \u003cbr\u003e \u003ci\u003eRehearsing the Future\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e \u003ci\u003e \u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e Throughout my life, whenever I was confronted by something I\u003cbr\u003e feared, I tried to make it my best friend, stare it in the face, and get\u003cbr\u003e to know its ins and outs. Eleanor Roosevelt once said, “You gain\u003cbr\u003e strength, courage, and confi dence by every experience in which you\u003cbr\u003e really stop to look fear in the face.” I have found this to be true.\u003cbr\u003e This is how I discovered that knowledge about what lies ahead can\u003cbr\u003e empower me, help me conquer my fears, take the wind out of the\u003cbr\u003e sails of my anxiety. Know thine enemy! Remember Rumpelstiltskin,\u003cbr\u003e the evil dwarf in the Grimms’ fairy tale? He was destroyed\u003cbr\u003e once the miller’s daughter learned his name and called it out. When\u003cbr\u003e we name our fears, bring them out into the open, and examine\u003cbr\u003e them in the light, they weaken and wither.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e So, one of the ways I have tried to overcome my fears of aging\u003cbr\u003e involved rehearsing for it. In fact, I started doing this in Act II. I\u003cbr\u003e believe that this rehearsal for the future (along with doing a life\u003cbr\u003e review of the past) is part of why I have been able— so far— to live\u003cbr\u003e Act III with relative equanimity.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e Being with my father when he was in his late seventies and in\u003cbr\u003e decline due to heart problems was what began to shatter any childhood\u003cbr\u003e illusions I’d had of immortality. I was in my mid- forties, and it\u003cbr\u003e hit me that with him gone, I would be the oldest one left in the family\u003cbr\u003e and, before too long, next at the turnstile. I realized then that it was\u003cbr\u003e not so much the idea of death itself that frightened me as it was being\u003cbr\u003e faced with regrets, the “what if”s and the “if only”s when there is no\u003cbr\u003e time left to do anything about them. I didn’t want to arrive at the end\u003cbr\u003e of the Third Act and discover too late all that I had not done.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e I began to feel the need to project myself into the future, to\u003cbr\u003e visualize who I wanted to be and what regrets I might have that I\u003cbr\u003e would need to address before I got too old. I wanted to understand\u003cbr\u003e as much as possible what cards age would deal me; what I could\u003cbr\u003e realistically expect of myself physically; how much of aging was\u003cbr\u003e negotiable; and what I needed to do to intervene on my own behalf\u003cbr\u003e with what appeared to be a downward slope.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e The birth of my two children had taught me the importance of\u003cbr\u003e knowledge and preparation. The fi rst birth had been a terrifying,\u003cbr\u003e lonely experience; I went through it unprepared and unrehearsed,\u003cbr\u003e swept along passively in a sea of pain. The second birth was quite\u003cbr\u003e the opposite. My husband and I worked with a birth educator in\u003cbr\u003e the months leading up to my due date, so that I was able to visualize\u003cbr\u003e what would happen and know what to do. The physical ordeal\u003cbr\u003e was no less grueling, the process no faster, but the experience itself\u003cbr\u003e was transformed. With knowledge and rehearsal, I found it easier\u003cbr\u003e to ride atop the sequence of events rather than be totally submerged\u003cbr\u003e by the pain.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e I brought what I’d learned from childbirth to my experience\u003cbr\u003e facing late midlife. As I said, I was scared back then— it is hard to\u003cbr\u003e let go of children, of the success that came with youth, of old identities\u003cbr\u003e when new ones aren’t yet clearly defi ned. I felt I could choose\u003cbr\u003e whether to be blindly propelled into later life, in denial with my\u003cbr\u003e eyes wide shut, or I could take charge and seek out what I needed\u003cbr\u003e to know in order to make informed decisions in the many changing\u003cbr\u003e areas of my life. That’s why, in 1984, at age forty- six, before I’d even\u003cbr\u003e had my fi rst hot fl ash, I wrote \u003ci\u003eWomen Coming of Age, \u003c\/i\u003ewith Mignon\u003cbr\u003e McCarthy, about what women can expect, physically, as they age,\u003cbr\u003e and what parts of aging are negotiable. It was a way to force myself\u003cbr\u003e to confront and rehearse the future. I was shocked to discover how\u003cbr\u003e little research had been devoted to women’s health. Most medical\u003cbr\u003e studies I found had been done on men. I’m happy to say this has\u003cbr\u003e started to change.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e At forty- six, I began to envision the old woman I wished to be,\u003cbr\u003e and I described her in that book:\u003cbr\u003e I see an old woman walking briskly, out- of- doors, in every\u003cbr\u003e season. She’s feisty. She’s not afraid of being alone. Her face\u003cbr\u003e is lined and full of life. There’s a ruddy fl ush to her cheeks\u003cbr\u003e and a bright curious look in her eye because she’s still learning.\u003cbr\u003e Her husband often walks with her. They laugh a lot. She\u003cbr\u003e likes to be with young people and she’s a good listener. Her\u003cbr\u003e grandchildren love to tell her stories and to hear hers because\u003cbr\u003e she’s got some really good ones that contain sweet, hidden\u003cbr\u003e lessons about life. She has a conscious set of values and the\u003cbr\u003e knack to make them compelling to her young friends.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e This is an example of rehearsing the future . . . good to do at any age!\u003cbr\u003e I’m glad I wrote it down, because it’s fun for me to read my\u003cbr\u003e forty- six- year- old vision of my senior self, almost thirty years later, as\u003cbr\u003e a reality check to see how well I’m doing. Some days, I actually think\u003cbr\u003e I’m doing pretty well. I’m still feisty, and my solitude (which I cherish)\u003cbr\u003e doesn’t feel like loneliness. Humor has defi nitely come to the\u003cbr\u003e fore. I’m no longer married, but I do walk together with my— what\u003cbr\u003e to call the man I am with when I’m seventy- two and unmarried?\u003cbr\u003e “Boyfriend” sounds too juvenile, don’t you think? So then, what?\u003cbr\u003e “Lover?” That seems too in- your- face. I think I’ll go with “honey.”\u003cbr\u003e Anyway, my honey and I walk together, we laugh a lot, and we try to\u003cbr\u003e swing- dance for fi fteen or twenty minutes every night— when we\u003cbr\u003e can. I feel I may have fi nally conquered my diffi culties with intimacy.\u003cbr\u003e (Or maybe I just found a man who isn’t scared of it!)\u003cbr\u003e Gerontologists such as Bernice Neugarten have learned from\u003cbr\u003e their studies of the aged that traumatic events— widowhood,\u003cbr\u003e menopause, loss of a job, even imminent death— are not experienced\u003cbr\u003e as traumas “if they were anticipated and, in effect, \u003ci\u003erehearsed \u003c\/i\u003eas\u003cbr\u003e part of the life cycle.”\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e Betty Friedan, in her book \u003ci\u003eThe Fountain of Age, \u003c\/i\u003ewrote, “The fi nding\u003cbr\u003e emerges that the difference between knowing and planning,\u003cbr\u003e and not knowing what to expect (or denial of change because of\u003cbr\u003e false expectations) can be the crucial factor between moving on to\u003cbr\u003e new growth in the last third of life, or succumbing to stagnation,\u003cbr\u003e pathology, and despair.”\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e With the help of many friends of all ages, as well as gerontologists,\u003cbr\u003e sexologists, urologists, biologists, psychologists, experts in\u003cbr\u003e cognitive research and health care, and a physicist or two, I have\u003cbr\u003e written this book. Even though I was already in my own Act III,\u003cbr\u003e doing this has been a form of rehearsal— for myself and for you, the\u003cbr\u003e reader. I wanted to be prepared and learn all I could. I wanted to\u003cbr\u003e be able to say to myself and to you, “Let’s make the most of the\u003cbr\u003e years that take us from midlife to the end, and here’s how!”\u003cbr\u003e I do not want to romanticize the process of aging. Obviously,\u003cbr\u003e there is no guarantee that this will be a time of growth and fruition.\u003cbr\u003e There are negatives to any stage of life, including potentially serious\u003cbr\u003e issues of mental and physical health. I cannot address all these\u003cbr\u003e things within the scope of this book. As we know, some of how life\u003cbr\u003e unfolds is a matter of luck. Some of it—about one- third, actually—\u003cbr\u003e is genetic and beyond our control. The good news is that this means\u003cbr\u003e that for a lot of it, maybe two- thirds of the life arc, we \u003ci\u003ecan \u003c\/i\u003edo something\u003cbr\u003e about how well we do.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e This book is for those of us who, like me, believe that luck is\u003cbr\u003e opportunity meeting preparation; that with preparation and knowledge,\u003cbr\u003e with information and refl ection, we can try to raise the odds\u003cbr\u003e of being lucky, and of making our last three decades— our Third\u003cbr\u003e Acts— the most peaceful, generous, loving, sensual, transcendent\u003cbr\u003e time of all; and that planning for it, especially during one’s middle\u003cbr\u003e years, can help make this so.\u003cbr\u003e  \u003cbr\u003e \u003ci\u003eWholeness\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e \u003ci\u003e \u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e Arnheim’s staircase made me realize how important it can be to see\u003cbr\u003e life as an interplay between one’s beginning, middle, and end. I\u003cbr\u003e found out that if we understand more deeply what Act I and Act II\u003cbr\u003e are (or were) about, who we are (or were becoming) during those\u003cbr\u003e foundational years, what dreams are still to be realized and which\u003cbr\u003e regrets addressed, then we can see Act III as a coming to fruition,\u003cbr\u003e rather than simply a period of marking time, or the absence of\u003cbr\u003e youth. We can understand it not as the far side of the arch— as the\u003cbr\u003e decline after the peak— but as \u003ci\u003ea stage of development \u003c\/i\u003ein its own terms.\u003cbr\u003e We can experience it as part of the staircase— with its own challenges\u003cbr\u003e and joys, pitfalls and rewards, a stage as evolving and as satisfying\u003cbr\u003e and different from midlife or youth as adolescence is from\u003cbr\u003e childhood.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e In 1996, Erik and Joan Erikson wrote, in \u003ci\u003eThe Life Cycle Completed,\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e “Lacking a culturally viable ideal of old age, our civilization does\u003cbr\u003e not really harbor a concept of the whole of life.”4 The old ways of\u003cbr\u003e thinking about age, the fears of losing our youth and facing our\u003cbr\u003e own mortality, have kept us from seeing Act III as a vital, inte-\u003cbr\u003e grated part of our overall story, the potential- fi lled culmination of\u003cbr\u003e the fi rst two acts. This old thinking is even more tragic now, in light\u003cbr\u003e of the extension of the life span. It can rob us of wholeness, and it\u003cbr\u003e can rob society of what we each, in our ripeness, have to offer.\u003cbr\u003e Those of us now entering our Third Acts are, on the whole,\u003cbr\u003e physically stronger and healthier than ever before. There is every\u003cbr\u003e likelihood that, if we work at it individually and collectively, we can\u003cbr\u003e develop a new “culturally viable ideal of old age” and see our lives as\u003cbr\u003e a series of stages that build one upon the other. Our doing so will\u003cbr\u003e not be just for us; it will represent a major cultural shift for the\u003cbr\u003e world around us and will help younger generations reconceive of\u003cbr\u003e their own life spans.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e I have been inspired and encouraged by what I have learned\u003cbr\u003e while writing this book. I hope reading it will do the same for you.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e And so let’s begin.New York Times bestseller","brand":"Random House Trade Paperbacks","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":46301880156389,"sku":"NP9780812978582","price":20.0,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/1842\/7735\/files\/9780812978582.jpg?v=1767735095","url":"https:\/\/k12savings.com\/products\/prime-time-isbn-9780812978582","provider":"K12savings","version":"1.0","type":"link"}