Moving from Older to Elder with Marc Cooper
I enjoyed sitting down with Marc Cooper, the insightful author behind "Older to Elder." Together, we discuss the difference between simply getting older and consciously stepping into the role of an elder—a transformation that calls for intention, mindfulness, and a commitment to higher purpose.
Marc brings a refreshing perspective, moving beyond conversations about ageism and decline to focus on what’s possible when we choose to live with wisdom, curiosity, and compassion. We talk about what it means to be a “contemporary elder” and how this journey involves embracing—not avoiding—life’s endings, and, in doing so, finding freedom, peace, and relevance.
Whether you’re navigating your own path through aging or supporting someone you love, I think this conversation will inspire you. It’s all about seeing aging not just as something that happens to us, but something we can deeply engage with—so we can truly age in full bloom.
Key Moments
00:00 Overcoming Ageism: "Older to Elder"
05:13 "Elders' Acceptance of Aging"
07:11 Embrace Death to Live Fully
11:59 Self-Discovery and Cultural Isolation
14:56 Embracing Life's Unfairness
18:29 Elder Freedom and Expression
23:07 "Life's End: Plan Backwards"
24:22 Hearing Life's Higher Purpose
30:10 Elder Acknowledgment and Transition
31:22 Inspiration: Confidence, Compassion, Kindness
Here are my big takeaways:
Elderhood is a Choice, Not Just a Stage: Becoming an elder requires mindfulness, intentionality, and self-inquiry. It’s about embracing the responsibilities and freedoms that come with age, rather than passively accepting societal narratives about getting old.
Legacy Through Presence and Purpose: Elders aren’t just “older” people—they’re contributors and stewards. By focusing on a higher purpose, elders enrich not only their own lives but also their communities, impacting personal, business, and political conversations with newfound wisdom.
Spirituality & Self-Reflection Are Key: The journey from older to elder hinges on self-acceptance, letting go of the past, and cultivating a sense of meaning. Marc emphasizes that this is a spiritual journey as much as a practical one, embracing uncertainty and fostering peace with both life and death.
Email me, Lisa Stockdale, anytime at aginginfullbloom@gmail.com
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Transcript
Listeners, thank you for listening to Aging in Full Bloom. I am so excited to introduce you to an author, named Marc Cooper who was on the phone with me. He wrote a book called Older to Elder. Marc, how are you today?
Marc Cooper [:I I am very well today.
Lisa [:Good. Are you older or are you elder?
Marc Cooper [:I'm both. You're both. Okay. But but they're different.
Lisa [:They're different. We're gonna talk about that in just a minute. I wanna read the back of your book to our listeners. The purpose of this book is to mitigate the cycle of suffering and delusion, which progressively worsens as one passes through late age, dying, and finally death. Attachments deepen the closer the horizon appears. Clinging tightens its grip, grasping, and clutching to the past and desperately grabbing at fantasy futures as unfulfillable expectations mount and with them suffering. Now that's dark. But what I love about it is it's real because that is the experience for many people in this country as they age.
Lisa [:But then we go on. Older to elder offers an invitation to those with the courage and the curiosity to become contemporary elders on a mission. First time I've heard this term, contemporary elders. To positively impact personal business and political conversations, not with despair, but with the self knowledge and wisdom we acquired through the years. Yes, Marc. That's why I named this podcast Aging in Full Bloom. Now I'm gonna shut up and let you talk.
Marc Cooper [:No. I it's best if you ask questions.
Lisa [:Yeah. Because
Marc Cooper [:Heather so, anyway, you have a curiosity. What what are you curious about?
Lisa [:Well, first of all, one of the things that amazes me about the book, I've interviewed hundreds of authors who have written on an array of different senior topics and most now I'm gonna upset somebody. But many, we'll say, many of those people, are all about helping us understand that ageism is real and that aging can suck for some people, in this country, for many of us, depending on what happens and how we go through it. And then they kinda stop there with that awareness. And while I think it's important to raise that awareness, this book is written on the assumption that that's real and we have to rise above it, and there are pathways to rise above it. And, you apparently are taking a pathway to rise above it, and you entitled the book Older to Elder. So tell me where the title comes from.
Marc Cooper [:It comes from older to elder. It's it's perfect. I can't say it any better. There's a there is a pathway. There is a a road, but the road isn't for everyone who's older, but it is for some who are older. So it is a qualifier, but it isn't what elder is. In our culture, elder means older. So one of the jobs I have is to separate those two into their distinct camps that they belong.
Marc Cooper [:I would say of the 57,000,000 people 65, maybe 12 to 14,000,000, have the courage it's exactly what the reduction said, have the courage and commitment and the intention to be the creators of their late life, not the people who are the effect or the victims of their late life. But it takes a certain intentionality and awareness and consciousness to know that you can go out and create life rather than have it be done to you. So I think elder is choice.
Lisa [:Yeah.
Marc Cooper [:Elder is elder is choice, elder is not. You're gonna get old, you're gonna die. That that you don't have a choice there. You have a choice in how you wanna live that older life. And that's what the elder is all about.
Lisa [:Yeah. I wrote down choosing choose to be an elder instead of agreeing to grow, to get old, to get old. There's even a difference, I think, in growing old and getting old. So Exactly. Let's start with what it means to be older. What what does it mean to be older?
Marc Cooper [:Well, you have to, deal with the truth. And by any biologic system, it is born, it exists, it decays, it dies. That's how biology works. It's a biologic phenomenon. It's it's irrefutable. So, older is a trait of death, and, older is not so there's a distinction there between older and older. Baldwin is, giving up. Elder is giving in.
Marc Cooper [:So you can get all kinds of issues when you're at the old you're unavoidable. Chronic diseases and problems, things that occur. All of those that occurred for me in some form or fashion than for the elder groups that I, participate with. So, but all the, charge to not be responsible and not only, it it comes as a loss. And for an elder who comes as life. And she says, Oh, okay. It's here now. How do I want to deal with it? So there's a different relationship that, elders have to getting old and elders have to get in hold.
Marc Cooper [:And that's up and down the line. It's pretty significant. See, it
Lisa [:I I would say answer
Marc Cooper [:your question.
Lisa [:Yes. I would say it is pretty significant. And when when I was reading the pieces of the book that I was able to get read before we we spoke this morning, one of the things that I mean, we know it, but I think you really pointed out that the the relationship starts with your relationship to yourself when you are moving from older to elder. And and you talk about this notion of you do need to start. Like, it is intentional. It is mindfulness. It's not gonna happen organically. You have to make it happen.
Lisa [:Would you agree?
Marc Cooper [:Totally. But they're already on that path. You know, when I sometimes I'm used to do, keynote speaking, And all the people in the audience are kind of well, they all have gray hair. Some don't, so they're smart enough to do it early. And, here they are facing the end of life. The end. And they've never been with the end in a way that empowers them. They've always been with the end to avoid it.
Marc Cooper [:And avoidance gives you no power. It just gives you fear and victimhood. So there's a way that elders can be with the end of life in a different way as because there's something beyond what they are now experiencing is life. So if you have death be inevitable, but opportunity to go on in some form or fashion, whatever you it may happen, we'll never know. But believe in mystery and be okay with uncertainty, and then you live from your death backwards rather than from your life forwards. That's how elders live their life. Oh, I'm gonna die. What do I wanna do with the rest of my life? What is that gonna be about? I feel, and I think the other people who are working with me now feel, and contemporary elders, the perfect language for this, their elders with all the traditions and heritage and legacy and ancestry of elders for thousands and thousands of years, but they're able to translate that and implement that in today's world.
Marc Cooper [:They're contemporary elders. Mhmm. So there's there's a a clarity about what they ought to be up to, these elders, not just getting older. You have you have to be less selfish. It has to be about trying to heal or repair the world around you. It's not working really well. But if you look, there's no elder at the table. There's no and they're they're seen as older, so they're pushed aside or outside.
Marc Cooper [:But elder does not exist inside of the conversations that are occurring where decisions are made about the future. There's no elder.
Lisa [:Is this term contemporary elder, is it yours or did you borrow it?
Marc Cooper [:I borrow everything. There's nothing in the world of the planet. And you find and I and elder knows he's an example of elder knowledge. When you know it's not just yours, but you're a, you're a steward of it.
Lisa [:Mhmm.
Marc Cooper [:You could you can name it a language and speak it in your own way, but it's already been in existence. It's already been there for millions of years. I don't know. Millions. Hundreds of thousands of years. Mhmm. So when I spend time with Aboriginal or Native American elders, they've been practicing at their plateau for five thousand years. The elder is the elder.
Marc Cooper [:That is a tradition that you have to carry as an elder. It's it's so an elder is for the tribe. An elder is for the future. An elder is for collaboration, cooperation, peace. An elder is for a future that takes one closer to the spiritual world. The knowledge responsible for that. So there's responsibilities that come with the title. And I'm try and people have to be aware that they have to go practice that in a world that doesn't wanna wanna hear them.
Lisa [:And with is that how you define wisdom?
Marc Cooper [:That's very good. I think there's two kinds of wisdom. You you were already on the path where you wouldn't be asking the questions and you wouldn't be interviewing me. You're going there. So it's just a matter of time. You get more faster than I do than I own, and you'll get there. You'll have that awareness and that consciousness and that self reflection and the understanding of yourself as a human being. But others also forgive themselves and accept themselves.
Marc Cooper [:You know, I'm not gonna be a better Marc Cooper ever. This is it, Particularly at my age. So I'm not gonna be a rock star. And, it's all and and you you make that clear to yourself as you get through this older to elder stage that you've got what you've got, and that's perfect. But making it perfect is the hard part. Mhmm. Because it's never it's never good enough. It should have been, it could have been, I'm your family, and all that stuff that goes on starts to let go of you as you move into becoming an older.
Lisa [:Mhmm. So this this sounds there there there are hints of spirituality here. Am I right?
Marc Cooper [:It's not a hint. It's direct. Okay. So I think see, people think, I don't know what people think is the truth. I know what I think. And, ultimately, you have to hold that you're the thinker. It's not just thoughts that you have. Help me spend time in reflection, contemplation.
Marc Cooper [:Some groups meditate. Some do philosophical inquiry. It doesn't really matter what path you choose, but you gotta get to you gotta get to the core of who you are and why you why you put it together this way. And what are the benefits and what are the costs? And do you need to hold on to it? So self inquiry for me is my best method to get rid of all the stuff, the vanures and the veils that will cover who I am up. There's a freedom in being an elder. Elder, you feel imprisoned. Imprisoned by the culture, imprisoned by the turn on the television and see who they have on their ads, and it's not old people. You you are you are being marginalized and isolated.
Marc Cooper [:There are ages and there's a reality. Mhmm. But who I am who I am, who am I in the middle of this prejudice going on? Am I gonna be succumb to that and try to, you know, play kickable at 92 and, you know, do all the things in in all that to avoid aging? Or am I going to embrace it in a way that gives me power, that gives me something I've never had before, that gives me a higher purpose, then it's the opportunity of helping.
Lisa [:Yeah. Yeah. And, like I said, the the the book doesn't just it doesn't just stop with exposing what's wrong with the world today in terms of the way we treat older people. It's all there, but it's way more than that. And you take some pretty deep dives. I'm interested in, I'm looking at the chapter, the elder's revenge is no revenge.
Marc Cooper [:Yeah.
Lisa [:What is the elder's revenge, dear sir?
Marc Cooper [:Well, you know, you can't believe life is unfair. If you take a look at that political movement in our country, that's why people are so upset. Life is unfair, so they think someone can make it fair. And so that's how it works, and politicians ebb and flow with that. But that that that's entitlement. I'm entitled to have life be fair. Come on. No.
Marc Cooper [:You're not. When you get older, it's pretty unfair. If life isn't worth it, life itself, as life isn't worth it, then it's unfair. But if it's worth it, then the unfairness gets really small in how you live your life. Oh, okay. They think I'm old. I think they're young, but I'm happy to express. It's no problem.
Marc Cooper [:It's all okay. Yeah. It's okay because I'm I'm seeing things and being things and being the life as I can be. And I at this age, then it's wondrous. I elders appreciate living. They are not pissed off that they're alive.
Lisa [:Yeah.
Marc Cooper [:I mean
Lisa [:And I I'm I'm looking at this sentence. Your brain is hooked on being right. And I I was thinking on the way into the studio this morning how often that stops us, sort of in our tracks because it's more important for us to be right and we think and it it and actually, it goes with what you're saying. We think life should be fair, but you live long enough, you're certainly gonna figure out it isn't. And then you have to figure out what to do with that. And for some people, it is to get angry and pissed off, as you say. I guess another thing I love about the book is I'm I'm watching someone in my own life, my mother, I would say, become an elder. And it's it's pretty exciting.
Lisa [:I I know there are challenges. I I mean, I see her, you know, grappling. Well, I think she's she's starting to accept it now, that, yeah, she is older and there are some cool things about it. People are always talk they're so afraid of losing their independence, but then what about gaining your freedom? And that's kind of what the book is about to me, how to gain your freedom, how to embrace aging, how to still be curious, and and to make a difference, not just in your own little world, in your own little family, but in the world at large. Am I making any sense to you, Martin?
Marc Cooper [:I I I think I'm using for my marketing of the book. It's really yeah. Really, really good on the other. I wanna emphasize the best piece that you said. So in the work that I do with people, our company, we we believe, and I I should say it's stronger, and we assert that part of being a contemporary elder is, having, living, and executing a higher purpose. That that will carry you in a way through life and or older life with, intention and purpose and juice. It gives you the juice.
Lisa [:Mhmm.
Marc Cooper [:It's really yeah. You know, if you're up to something so if you watch some of the people that were up to something, there's a passion that they speak with and have about life. Mhmm. And I think when you get older without that passion, it's tough to get old. But if you have that passion, it's not gonna get in the way. Your physical stuff doesn't get in the way as much when you're working on your higher purpose because it's shaping who you are in the world and in your mind. So we believe that an elder, true elder, is operating out of a higher purpose.
Lisa [:And so this notion of becoming an elder, I I presume you never quite arrive. It's always a work in progress?
Marc Cooper [:No. I think you're coming back to it.
Lisa [:Okay.
Marc Cooper [:I think it's all the people that I have worked with now, which is seven years on this path of becoming an elder, they do it's there. It's already there. It's in their humanity. It's in their genes. It's in their tribal nature. It's in how they care for people. It's in their compassion. It's in the way that they're they get upset and the world isn't working around and that people are being taken advantage of.
Marc Cooper [:There's a certain character and quality that's so there for an elder, and they just have suppressed that because the culture doesn't wanna see too much of that. But, like, the beauty of getting old is you stop caring what people think. Like, you know, it's like, you know, you wanna wear red hats? Don't do that. So there's a way of freedom in self expression, which you need to be responsible. And nobody is very sensitive to the environment that they're creating with people because you think they know they're gonna be interpreted as older. And so you're gonna get the usual conversations, the social conversations about, you know, what am I talking to their parents? That's that's for them. They're opening salvo. But if you're an elder and you're able to hear in a way and ask questions in a way that delete and deplete that ageism conversation.
Marc Cooper [:So the first job with an elder is to get that out of the way. You would if I sit down on the bench with Albert Einstein, I would not be the usual Marc Cooper. I would be something attuned to who I'm with, and that's an older. When you're sitting with an older, you are different.
Lisa [:Yeah. I yes. Oh my goodness. I had I'm I gotta take a minute to digest everything you're saying because that is so true. And that's how you change the world in a positive way by being present, but being mindful of not just yourself, but the people you're with and willingness to continue to learn, and knowing that you can and you do make a difference. You will make a difference if you want to.
Marc Cooper [:Yes. It makes a difference. But it isn't a difference like you have to be a heroic person that changes anything out that is pouring out the government or the presidency or the Supreme Court or whatever goes through your head. It's about changing you first so that you can deal with that stuff in a way that doesn't stop you from having a life that works. Oh, okay. You hear this. So I'm eight I'm 80. So I can take a look at your dates.
Marc Cooper [:So I asked my chat GPT, what happened on my birthday? And, I it's coming right up, by the way, till twenty ninth of eighty. And, it said, Doc Howe got released. Certain major global events occurred. And so it's like, oh, okay. So I I I've been in the world since then. This is the date I was born into. And now what's happened since then? So I've been through 12 recessions. I've been through five pandemics.
Marc Cooper [:I've been through 14 presidents. I you know what? You know? So something about objectivity rather than subjectivity becomes a skill set for an elder. You go, oh, yeah. I remember. Oh, I see. So you have a kind of relationship with the things that are occurring, which is I won't call it more mature. I'll just call it more peaceful. Oh, okay.
Marc Cooper [:So I don't get juiced and jilted and and angry here. I still have all those, but they don't pass. Oh, here that is. Yeah. Mhmm. This too shall pass. Yeah. So I will get you peace.
Marc Cooper [:Yeah.
Lisa [:And
Marc Cooper [:that's the beauty that's the beauty of it.
Lisa [:Yes. And and like I said, I think I mentioned, I'm seeing that with my own mother, and it is a beautiful thing to observe, to watch. Yeah. When,
Marc Cooper [:yeah. You You said your mother's in her seventies. One of the things we we suggest is also a structural way to move yourself into an older position and one is to be responsible for your end. You are going to die. And I mean, not if, when. So, it's going to happen. You know, take a look at what what you want people to be left with. And so you start to look from a legacy perspective.
Marc Cooper [:And then the other part is when you want people to be responsible. Be responsible for your own death is our probably our neighbors could be one of our slogans. Yeah. Don't leave people with crap all around. Take care of the end. Take care of your burial. Take care of your cremation. Take care of what what I will be doing, which is turning to compost.
Marc Cooper [:Take care of the end. Make sure you make sure you know exactly how so they don't have to do anything. You're responsible all the way from the end backwards. And then when you look at life as short when you're up here, you know, what what is it that I really wanna say about my life and do about my life and what how do I want it to be? Mhmm. And so I'm gonna have some freedom with even the choice. How do I go on?
Lisa [:So, Marc, what in your own life, can you share, like, what inspired this transition or this awakening or this return, however you wanna talk about it?
Marc Cooper [:I'll say it differently. I think it's a calling, and everybody has one. They just don't hear it. I heard mine. Oh, that's what I'm supposed to be doing. Twenty, thirty years ago, I'm sitting in a keyhole with 13 native Americans, and it felt right. Oh, what am I doing? It felt like, oh, yeah. This feels, I you know, watching an elder bring a certain presence and calmness and joy and aliveness and humor just by being an elder.
Marc Cooper [:And I said, man, I mean, I mean, that, it spoke to me. So I suppose I began to hear them. And then as I went through my life, elders appeared in various forms and then consolidated into a more, coaching, articulatable future for myself, and pretty soon, it is here. So I think that people, they they don't hear the higher purpose. They don't hear it. They don't have the wisdom to hear it. And that's part of the thing is to open up their ears to you know, there's something that you wanna be doing if you like. If you only got 20 left, what do you know what? What are those twenty years gonna be about? Mhmm.
Marc Cooper [:I that's the question.
Lisa [:So I'm I'm gonna ask. Don't hate me for asking, but how old were you when you heard this calling?
Marc Cooper [:Oh, it it started out as a whisper, then it got to be friends with, then it got to be, oh, my. I found myself always in on this path that didn't have, signage to say, well, now I'm here, and now I'm here, and now I'm here. It was just the path that took me, and all of a sudden, I ended up in Olderville. Oh, this is safe. My Camino, you know, it was my road, and I was always on it. I just didn't see the parts, linked as I do looking backward. Mhmm. And I think really so I I I think many people not many.
Marc Cooper [:I think there's certain percentage of people 65 that are on this path, and they need to understand what this path requires, and we have to understand responsibilities are, but they also need to feel, oh, you know, that's that's a future at at my age that would really give the last parts of my life, that last third, the way I would like to feel about my more about myself. So there are, you know, there are already many other channels like you.
Lisa [:Sad. Well, I hope you're right about that. I hope you're right about that. Now your book, when was it published?
Marc Cooper [:I don't remember. You don't remember? It's the best part of that being old. I used to be embarrassed that I couldn't remember specific dates about the old days because I don't think in that way. So now I'm I'm amused by it. Why would I need to remember that? Past tense. One of the things that I found so excited about the old is that the past becomes objective rather than subjective. Oh, yeah. Well, now I I wrote a book and it did what it did, but now I'm going to what's next.
Marc Cooper [:So you don't try to reinterpret the past in a way that is always diminishing or could have been or should have been. We just let it go. So when we do what it means to an older and older is older retains contracts and elder releases, and I burns. It's, oh, okay. I'm okay just this way.
Lisa [:Can you buy the book that you don't remember when it was published, all the places that you buy books?
Marc Cooper [:Oh, yeah. Amazon, and I'm sure even more I think it's two years old. I think it's two years old now. But I think most there's a we're we're down here in Mexico. Someone may ask that question, when was your book published? And they go, you know, I I really don't know. I went to my next I'm already I went to my next book already. It's like, okay.
Lisa [:What's your next what's your next book gonna be called? Do you know yet?
Marc Cooper [:I think no. I'm I'm working on I think you I think books well, this is an aside. You write at this stage and you can push it. I think books serve a purpose, and some people write for fame. I write to to generate a certain insight. Mhmm. Because when I'm writing about something, I can't quite get it. And when I language it, it is coming solely from my head.
Marc Cooper [:It's coming through me in a way that takes the paper with me. So I'm not going to give me it gives me insight. It gives me insight. And so elders contemplate, reflect, and and nurture and nurture insights. So that's where I write. But I think the writing now has gotta move towards the less to substack into all those other places that allows people to eat, eat in small bites. Because people don't read to the maybe they do. I just think that people don't have a they want I believe that people are looking for, insights that match what they're working against right now.
Marc Cooper [:Something's in your life that gets inside of their way of happiness or peace or, relationship, and they're looking and they're older like me trying to figure out how to where to go next. And I think if it comes in pieces, it's a little bit easier than a book.
Lisa [:Mhmm. Well, the fact that you write to share insights and to gain insights and to put language to insights makes a book a really great read no matter who you are. So, the book is called Older to Elder listeners, and I I highly highly recommend it. Marc, it's been lovely. Do you do you have closing thoughts that you wanna leave our listeners with?
Marc Cooper [:Yeah. I do, actually. So it's wonderful talking to you. There's a gentleness and kindness in your speaking. And it's a way that you talk about your mother and, you know, you can't become an elder in a nice, limited way. You have to become an elder in the relationships that surround you. And then you're beginning to notice it. I will say that acknowledgment is the highest level of request, that you are acknowledging to her and with her that she's moving in the other direction to be at peace with her life, to let the things go that she can't change, to adopt a new way of being as she moves into this age, that you acknowledge that in her reinforces that in her and grows that in her.
Marc Cooper [:So one of the things you're doing brilliantly is, taking care of your mother as she moves through this last part of her life. So I wanna thank you for doing that.
Lisa [:You're gonna make me cry, Marc. I'm trying to get off of the podcast here.
Marc Cooper [:Well, we can get off because that is my closing statement.
Lisa [:Well, that thank you for that.
Marc Cooper [:I I will
Lisa [:I will say that, on my drive in, I was thinking about, like, the things the book inspired in me and two words came to mind. The first is confidence. Well, three, compassion and kindness. And if you can read anything that inspires those things, that's a read, that's a ride you wanna take. Listeners, till next time. May the road rise to meet you. May the wind be forever at your back.
