Gloria Steinem Gets Advice

 By Erica and Karen

Gloria Steinem’s My Life on the Road provides a window into the person, not just the accomplishments of the road warrior we all know she is. There were tons of nuggets of interest. We were particularly taken with accounts of random conversations with random people, like taxi drivers, who have some important life-altering things to say. Here is one of our favorites:

I'm sitting next to a very old and elegant woman on a plane from Dallas to New York. Assuming that she needs company, I start a conversation. She turns out to be a ninety-eight year old former Ziegfeld girl who is on her way to dance in an AIDS benefit on Broadway with her hundred-and-one-year-old friend from chorus girl days—something they’ve been doing since the tragedy of AIDS first appeared. Humbled by this response and looking for advice on my own future now that I’m past seventy, I ask her how she has remained herself all these years. She looks at me as if at a slow pupil. “You’re always the person you were when you were born,” she says impatiently. “You just keep finding new ways to express it.”

Our point exactly. We are the same people we were yesterday, before we retired. We just are finding new ways to express it.