Take a Seat
Jack Lack’s Listening Chair is a project about how to live well, how to live as long as possible independently — and how to go on living well when the shape of life changes.
Retirement arrives for the fortunate among us eventually. For some it is a long-anticipated reward; for others, an unsettling transition into unfamiliar territory. Most people will be fortunate enough to reach retirement age, but those who have thought carefully about it — who have planned, reflected, and prepared — are far more likely to retire happily than those who have not. Between those two poles lies a lot of room, and a lot of possibility.
Jack Lack’s Listening Chair is also for those already in retirement who sense there is still room for improvement in their arrangements — and who are warmly invited to ask questions and share their own experiences in our Voices and Issues page, where no topic need be limited to retirement alone, because retirees always need to live in the now, and things constantly change.
Jack Lack’s Listening Chair is equally for those around the age of forty-five who have the wisdom to look ahead. It also exists for a third, quieter purpose: to give each person interviewed here a permanent record of their own voice and story — a gift, perhaps, for their great-grandchildren not yet born.
What ageing well actually means
Financial and economic security matter — of course. But they are not everything, and Jack Lack’s Listening Chair is not primarily about money.
The concern here is the full range of what researchers and those who have lived long and well recognise as the hallmarks of ageing well: activity, independence, physical health, mental acuity, purpose, social connection, resilience, financial security, emotional wellbeing, and lifelong learning. The list is growing.
Each brief written commentary will then explore one or more of these hallmarks in depth — short points drawn over time — drawing mostly on research conducted on human beings, with appropriate credit always given to those whose work is cited.
Where animal studies are referenced, -sometimes there are good reasons for that — the reasons are acknowledged honestly; but the subject of Jack Lack’s Listening Chair is always, ultimately, the human life.
The interviewees
The aim is not to compare yourself to the famous, the exceptional, or the unreachable. It is to find people who can be emulated — and are worth emulating — these may be a minority, but we are surrounded by people like these in most communities.
You also have a chance to compare yourself, gently and honestly, to your own previous best.
The interviewees you will meet at Jack Lack’s Listening Chair are not celebrities. You will not usually find them by searching the internet. They are people who have built what might honestly be called successful lives — within their communities, their families, their professions — and who have something real to offer those who are willing to sit quietly and listen. They were found the old-fashioned way: by paying attention to the remarkable people already nearby.
The chair itself
In every filmed interview at Jack Lack’s Listening Chair, only one person is seen on screen: the interviewee. The interviewer is present — questions are asked, conversation flows — but no interviewer is ever visible. Jack Lack’s Listening Chair, in a sense, belongs to whoever sits in it.
That is intentional. The chair could be yours. It could be your neighbour’s. It could, one day, be anyone’s. Jack Lack’s Listening Chair is an open invitation — to speak, to listen, and to think about what a life well lived might look like.
How Jack Lack’s Listening Chair works
Content is published on a week-about rhythm. In written weeks, the commentary explores up to three key themes in what is really, short-form writing — reflective, researched, and personal.
In interview weeks, a filmed conversation with someone who has lived well is published — unhurried, attentive, and open. Jack Lack’s Listening Chair, in practice.
Initially content may be restricted to written comment, depending on the time it takes to meet, record, edit and post the recording of people of the kind contemplated for this site.
A note on the name
Simon Lack was a stage name — a persona, not a legal identity. Jack Lack is the notional son of that notional man: another persona, chosen because it is easy to remember, easy to say, and because — should Jack Lack’s Listening Chair outlast its founder — the role of Jack Lack can be passed on to someone else. A character, unlike a person, does not have to retire.
Jack Lack’s Listening Chair is both metaphor and name. It stands for something unhurried: attentive thinking as a quiet prelude to planning. Several listening chairs already exist in the world; Jack’s name on this one is what makes it his.
Jack Lack’s Listening Chair is always here for you, as is your welcome.