Leap! What Will We Do with the Rest of Our Lives?
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Finding freedom in life's final chapter
INTERVIEW BY DEANNA LARSON A flower child who attended the University of California at Berkeley in the 1960s, Sara Davidson epitomized her trailblazing generation. After studying at Columbia University's Graduate School of Journalism, she became a national correspondent for the Boston Globe, covering the election campaigns of Bobby Kennedy and Richard Nixon, as well as Woodstock. She helped establish the "new journalism" movement with articles for Harper's, Esquire, Atlantic Monthly and Rolling Stone, then became the literary voice of the baby boomer generation with her 1977 book Loose Change: Three Women of the Sixties. Davidson then alternated between writing books (including the best-selling novel Cowboy) and producing and writing for television, including her Golden-Globe-nominated tenure as writer/producer of "Dr. Quinn, Medicine Woman." Clearly, Davidson wouldn't accept a "conventional retirement" of baking bread and knitting baby blankets in a McMansion by the links. But after her children left for college, her lover abandoned her, and Hollywood suddenly stopped knocking on her door, Davidson was stripped of every meaningful role she had known almost overnight. What was she supposed to do with the next 30 years?
Boomers forge their own way and look to each other, Davidson discovered. Following the "struggle with every demon inside—what you should do, what you're due," a lust for joyful work and personal excellence re-emerges in this laid-back generation. "There's air and possibility at the end," Davidson says. "We can be freer now. We've checked off so many things." The author answered questions about the book from her home in the mountains near Boulder, Colorado. Leap! is categorized as "self-help." Do you consider this a self-help book?
The book is full of anecdotes, but few directives on "how" to age. Was this intentional?
Were you surprised by what you discovered?
Did the process of writing the book ease your own transition?
How would you sum up the aging process?
What does being "relentless and fearless" mean now that you've passed 50?
Every person has gifts and nobody can take those away . . . and what your gift is, matters. You have a rhythm with that one tune that's yours to play. What else is there? At the end it's going to be about the moment[s] you're fully alive, loving and being loved. |
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"It is so hard to make a dent in the culture now," Davidson admitted. So she picked up her tape recorder and started interviewing boomer friends and acquaintances about their own final-chapter transitions. Leap! What Will We Do with the Rest of Our Lives? reads like a long, meandering and fascinating Esquire profile, documenting Davidson's own experiences, and those of more than 150 interview subjects including Jane Fonda, Ram Dass, Tom Hayden and Carly Simon, along with plenty of juicy facts from studies on aging.