A Nudge to Remember: The Elder Questing Threshold
Dying with Authenticity
Michael Moon is a tribal elder and per/verse polymath bringing forth the possibility of being truly human. You can find him on LinkedIn.
My dear friend of over 30 years, Steven, died this past Saturday, March 8, 2025, due to complications from brain cancer. He departed as he arrived—bathed by a field of unconditional love, cherishment, and profound gratitude.
Throughout his diagnosis, surgeries, and chemotherapy, we often discussed the future—the next steps and the transitions that lay ahead. What mattered wasn’t the content of these conversations, but rather the way he embraced this inevitability. How it was situated for him.
By situated, I don’t mean his mindset or mood, nor his posture toward dying. I mean something deeper, unspeakable yet pervasive—an embodied presence, a knowing beyond words. It was a question between us: Who are we in this moment? And what aspect of our greater selves do we bring forward in this situation?
In an early conversation about his diagnosis, I asked bluntly: Steve, you have a choice here. Simple and hard. How will you make your dying a gift? A gift of service? How do you make this available to others—not as a burden, but as a possibility, a permission to be fully alive?
His response was classic Steven: an exuberant, boundless riff of impressions, wild gestures, paradoxical mischief. It was jazz, not logic—an improvisation of thoughts and laughter, of infinite possibility spilling over. That’s how we spoke—lively, non-linear, radically honest, weaving paradox into music.
Amidst the word dance, something shifted. Not in the words or mood, but something deeper. A shift in being itself. Not just in Steven, but in the Being of Michael and Steven together. He took a stand—not to go out with a whimper, not to burden others, but to go out as he had lived: mischievously, freely, exuberantly. Jazz improv, irreverence, and a giant dose of gratitude.
Elder Questing: The Threshold of Choice
I realize, as I reflect on his gift—not just to me, but to anyone willing to receive it—that it wasn’t in his words. I’ve heard countless people say they’ll “go out my way.” That’s not it. What Steven offered was something different: an incommunicable truth, communicated. A transmission, not of words, but of Being.
In our final moments, we can step into a timeless space. The world on pause. Into what I’ve called vertical time—no past, no future, just a shimmering now of possibility, filled with unspeakable beauty and presence. This is the realm of myth, epic quests, and friendships that recognize each other; time after time, we found each other.
It marks the beginning of Elder Questing.
I submit that we are entering an axial moment, a crossroads, around the age of 65—by 72, whether we acknowledge it or not.
We have lived our years. Now we face a choice:
To become something more—to take the stand that Steven took. To step into the role of mentor, muse, or tribal shaman. To transform experience into wisdom, heed the call of the Double, integrate the whole self, offering it all in service.
Or to disappear into comfortable mediocrity—to follow the default retirement script of diminishing relevance, retreating into a slow fade. Science confirms what ancient traditions knew: the pursuit of comfort accelerates aging, illness, and death. The refusal to step into service, to remain in the world but not of it, leads to early decline.
In the developed world, we have exhausted or discarded the rituals and social frameworks that once marked this transition. In this absence, we find ourselves in a state of longing, grappling with uncertainty and the weight of unfulfilled desires, regret, and shame. It is as if we are wandering through a fog, yearning for the light of guidance and the wisdom of an elder culture to illuminate our path.
Without these clear rites of passage, we may feel adrift, yet within this very drift into uncertainty and unfulfilled longing, regret, and shame.
Yet, beneath the surface, something stirs. An elder culture is now emerging.
The Unfinished Business of a Generation
This moment is the unfinished work of the counterculture—of those in the ‘60s and ‘70s who rebelled against empty norms and sought something real. Now, as they reach this axial moment, they can fulfill what was left undone—not in rebellion, but in wisdom.
Theodore Roszak once spoke of an emerging elder culture. We are now in the midst of it.
And someone must take a stand for it.
At 65 or 72, who will be living the rest of your life? Indeed, who?
Ode to the Elder Ones
Remember Apple’s “Think Different” campaign—the call to the crazy ones, the misfits, the rebels, and those who see and think different.
What if we crafted it for those true elders? For those who shatter the confines of mediocrity, not with technology, but with wisdom, ineffable presence, and the quiet dedication of service?
Here’s to the ones who refuse to fade.
Those who see age as an invitation, not a withering.
Those who take a stand—not for comfort, but for aliveness.
Those who hold space for others to grow.
Those who listen beyond words.
Those who know that legacy is not what you leave behind, but rather what you ignite in others, now.
Not everyone understands them.
Not everyone will choose this path.
But those who do will transform everything, particularly themselves.
A Whisper, A Nudge
Elder questing is a choice, not a given.
A choice to stand. A choice to step forward when retreating would be easier. A choice to become.
Steven chose to transform his dying into a gift, a possibility, a transmission.
Now, the question comes to you.
What stand will you take?
Who will live the rest of your life?