Bill Thomas Delivers Energizing Talk on Elderhood at TEDxSF

“We inhabit a culture that worships youth with near religious zeal. And youth—or more accurately, our obsession with achieving an everlastingly youthful adulthood—is sucking the life out of us,” argued Bill Thomas, at the TEDxSF conference on June 4 in San Francisco. Thomas is a geriatrician, founder of the Eden Alternative and Green House Project to abolish nursing homes, and faculty at UMBC’s Erickson School. In seeking to improve the living conditions of older adults, Thomas challenges what he describes as our society’s failure to recognize elderhood as a rich and meaningful stage of life following adulthood. “It is good to live one’s adult years with the knowledge that the torrid pace of that life stage is not permanent,” Thomas argues, “We are meant to outgrow adulthood and leave its fevered realm behind.” Watch his talk online and read his accompanying op-ed, published in the San Fransisco Chronicle.