RECLAIMING THE UNLIVED LIFE:

Narrative, Legacy & Creative Renewal

A Two-Day Elder Wisdom Symposium

November 11 & 12, 2026

We are inviting proposals!

We are looking for voices who can help our community explore these questions with wisdom, depth, and care.

Read our request for proposals

Keynote

Growing old is inevitable. Becoming an Elder is a choice.

Meet the keynote speaker

Dr. Marc Cooper

MARC WHO?

I embarked on a profound—and honestly, often messy—journey to become an authentic Elder in a culture that mostly confuses “elder” with “older.” Big difference. One is a stage of life. The other is a way of being.

On El Camino Hacia ser un Anciano—the road to becoming an Elder—there were no clear road signs, no GPS, and certainly no app announcing, “In 500 feet, turn left toward wisdom.”

I’ve lived many phases and stages: academician, researcher, healthcare provider, entrepreneur, consultant, teacher, speaker, husband, father, grandfather, and now great-grandfather. Along the way, I’ve succeeded, failed, reinvented myself, fallen down a few metaphorical staircases, and learned that wisdom usually arrives right after you needed it.

What I discovered is that becoming an Elder requires something beyond knowledge, status, appearance, or achievement. It requires higher wisdom: a deeper awareness of life, our interconnectedness, and our responsibility to one another.

In my books, webinars, and speaking engagements, I challenge the culture’s default path of decline and irrelevance. I propose another possibility:

Growing old is inevitable. Becoming an Elder is a choice.

WHY I SAID YES

I said yes to being a keynote speaker at the Reclaiming the Unlived Life: Narrative, Legacy & Creative Renewal symposium—which I think of as Reclaiming Your Unmet Future—is because I’ve reached the age where pretending no longer interests me.

Most people grow older carrying an invisible suitcase filled with unlived lives, postponed dreams, abandoned conversations, and futures they quietly gave up on. By late age, that suitcase can weigh more than the person carrying it. We call it “normal.” I don’t.

An unmet future is not failure. It is unfinished possibility still knocking at the door of your life.

I’m not interested in helping people age gracefully into irrelevance. The culture already has a well-funded program for comfort, distraction, and slow disappearance. Thank you, but no thank you.

What interests me is what becomes possible when a human being stops negotiating with fear and begins living from something deeper, clearer, and more truthful.

At 81, I’ve learned this:
The future does not disappear with age.
It becomes more personal. More urgent. More honest.

Because perhaps the greatest tragedy is not dying.
It is arriving at the end of your life, having never fully met yourself.

About the Symposium

This symposium creates sacred space for elders to examine the narratives that have shaped their lives and to reclaim the stories, dreams, and creative sparks left behind in the rush of responsibility.

Over two days, we gather to ask essential questions: What narrative are we living into? Who authored it—and who can rewrite it now? Drawing on Reb Zalman Schachter-Shalomi's teaching about resurrecting the unlived life and expanding that to include exploring the unimagined life that still beckons, we invite participants to move from unconscious inheritance to conscious authorship.

Through keynote teachings, dialogue with seasoned elders, and dedicated practice in reigniting creativity, we support each other in transmitting wisdom while simultaneously opening to what has yet to be lived. This is not about nostalgia or regret—it's about liberation, legacy, and the radical possibility that our most creative, authentic chapters may still lie ahead.