John Izzo is the bestselling author of Second Innocence. As a speaker on purposeful living, he has addressed more than one million people on four continents. This paperback is based on his TV series for the Biography Channel. The quest behind the project was to explore what it takes to live a full and meaningful life.
Izzo began by asking 15,000 people across the United States and Canada to send him recommendations of the wise elders in their lives. Out of those responses, 235 individuals ranging in age from 59 to 105 were selected and interviewed over a period of one to three hours. What they came up with is that a life worthy of living contains an admirable mixture of happiness (a day-by-day contentment) and meaning (a sense of connection).
Three of the five secrets these wise elders confirm are:
• Be true to yourself.
• Leave no regrets.
• Give more than you take.
On the subject of regrets Izzo writes:
"Regret is possibly the one thing we all fear the most; that we might look back on our lives and wish we had done things differently. In my experience from the last 30 years, validated in these interviews, death is not what we fear the most. When we have lived life fully and done what we hoped to do, we can accept death with grace. What we fear most is not having lived to the fullest extent possible, to come to the end of our life with our final words being 'I wish I had.' "
The spiritual antidotes to regret are taking more risks, living as if your time is short, and letting go of fears and timidity. On the subject of giving more than you take, Izzo talks about asking what life expects of you, losing yourself, and learning to cry for the world, not for yourself. Reading these passages, we were impressed with how much can be learned from elders who have weathered the storms of life and have pondered the values that give life meaning. Hopefully, this book will encourage readers to pay more attention to their elders.
