Brendan Kelly
speaker
164 appearances
1 recordings
1 series
first heard Jun 2026
last heard 28 Jun
Brendan Kelly’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.
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recordings per month · last 12 monthsRecordings per month over the last 12 months — 1 in all, peaking in Jun 2026 with 1.
Appearances
I remember someone taught me this when I was about to do a talk or a lecture or some such.
And I said to this older psychiatrist, I said, look, what if I make a mistake?
What if I say something wrong?
And he said, don't worry about that, Brendan.
Most people aren't listening.
Yeah, absolutely.
I mean, there's wisdom everywhere, but certainly from older adults and people, say older adults with mental illness, who often have been through a great deal in life and have often been through a great deal of suffering.
and pain and inner pain in ways that I have not and hopefully will not.
And with that comes, I would put it more like an attitude, an approach rather than wisdom that they can put into words.
And interestingly, we saw this a little bit, Brendan, during the COVID pandemic when, you know, we were very concerned about older adults and isolation and so forth, and rightly so.
But the surveys all showed that older adults tended to cope better with the pandemic than younger people because they had been through so many different things in their life.
and had just that little bit more, by way of solidity, a more phlegmatic attitude.
And while some people suffered deeply, I am aware of that.
In general, the life skills and experience of older adults proved of much more value than they were given credit for.
Not as reactive moment to moment.
Maybe more aware of the bigger issues, the more transcendental issues, but just not so much taken by the moment to moment fluctuations.
So that gerotranscendence is one of these terms.
It's kind of a theory of positive ageing invented by a Swedish sociologist called Lars Trondstam.
And what it basically says is that ageing can narrow certain things.
You know, we have to be honest, there can be health problems and hearing problems and sight problems, but it can widen perspective.
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