Modern Elder is a Soul Biography with Chip Conley — entrepreneur, author, founder of Modern Elder Academy, and one of the defining voices in the reimagining of midlife.
But this is not a film about achievement. It is a film about what life reveals when achievement is no longer enough.
Chip speaks from the threshold between collapse and renewal: a near-death experience, cancer, the loss of friends, the end of an identity, and the fierce grace that came when life asked him to slow down.
What emerges is less a story than a frequency. The grief, wisdom, service, beauty, and lived experience from which MEA was born are not merely described here. They are present.
I slept and dreamt that life was joy.
I awoke and saw that life was service.
I acted, and behold, service was joy.
Rabindranath Tagore
Chip’s own words about this experience – here. You can add observations, comments and questions.
I – Nic, that is – set out to make a film portrait that would carry that presence over time — a lasting mirror to the source of a pioneering organization, and to the spirit from which it continues to grow.
And perhaps, too, an invitation to other founders: to consider what it might mean to leave behind not only the story of what they built, but the living essence from which it came.
one same heartbeat