The people who have lived the most are the people we listen to the least.
That's the problem Prime Citizens exists to correct.
Prime Citizens is a movement to revalue people aged 65 to 80 as the source of real, lived, accumulated life experience — and to bring them into direct conversation with anyone, of any age, who is facing something they've already lived through.
Not as advisors. Not as experts. As themselves. Someone who has been there.
What a conversation looks like
One Prime Citizen. One person seeking a conversation. Introduced carefully, by a human, on a topic the Prime Citizen has actually lived.
In person when we can arrange it. Video when we can't. Sixty to ninety minutes. One meeting is often enough. Sometimes there is a second, by mutual choice.
The Prime Citizen is not there to advise, prescribe, or fix. They're there to be present, in real conversation, with someone who wanted to hear from them.
The person on the other side of the conversation is not there to be coached, therapized, or lectured. They're there because they wanted to talk to someone who had been where they are.
Both people leave with more of what they came for than the internet gave them.
What Prime Citizens is not
- Not therapy. Not coaching. Not a support group. Not expert advice.
- Not "wisdom of elders" in a reverent, keep-them-safely-on-a-shelf sense. Prime Citizens are alive, present, energetic, and in the middle of things — not being memorialized.
- Not oppositional to therapists, coaches, or counselors. Additive. A different category of source. Someone who lived it, sitting next to someone who studied it. Both belong.
- Not a senior-services product. Prime Citizens is for everyone — sourced from the 65 to 80 cohort, but built for anyone of any age who wants a real conversation with someone who's been there.
Why now
Most of us have people in our lives who have lived enormously — parents, aunts, uncles, neighbors, the person at the coffee shop who has been there thirty years — and we let all of that go unused.
The rest of us, meanwhile, are trying to figure out marriage, illness, career reboots, raising a child who doesn't fit the mold, losing someone we love — and we're doing it by reading threads written by people who have never lived any of it.
You already know, quietly, that the best conversations of your life were with real people who had been there.
Prime Citizens is a movement to make that kind of conversation possible on purpose — for the people who have lived it, and for the people who need to hear from someone who has.
Who is behind this
Prime Citizens was founded by Benjamin Arazy, based in Vancouver, British Columbia.
The movement is currently in its pilot stage. Every conversation is arranged by hand. Every reply comes from a real person.
More on the About page.
Two paths. One movement.
If you're 65 to 80 and something in this speaks to you, say hello. We'd like to hear about the life you've lived, and what part of it you might be willing to share.
Say hello — I might be a Prime Citizen
If you're facing something and you want to talk to someone who has been there, tell us what you're wrestling with. A human will read what you write and reply.