sidenotes
I have often wondered if the world might be a better place if each of us made a point to spend more time interacting with two groups of people–the elderly and the infants.
I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but people who have lived a long while, enduring this planet’s cosmic mix of ups and downs for decades, have this rare commodity called wisdom. That’s why Tuesdays With Morrie went over so well and why I tap a few dying-stories about my grandma in Picking Dandelions.
The very elderly have shaken free from the illusion that they will live forever, or that their bodies are smooth-oiled machines, which gives them this thing called perspective. They know what is important in life (people and faith and faith and people) and they know what isn’t (possessions and appearance and drama). And they’ve got time to talk and patience to love, since a lot of their bodies have given up being able to do much more than that.
Babies, on the other hand, are as close to natural as humans get. They
have yet to be conditioned by anyone; to be socialized into other people’s expectations. They don’t spend time worrying about the past or the future. They are drawn to the outdoors and to animals, to light and to music. They turn shiny things over in their hands and press their fingers into things that are squishy. They don’t worry about emailing or faxing anything. They laugh and squeal and hum to themselves, oblivious to what anybody else thinks about anything.
Life naturally sandwiches us–generationally–between the aged and the young, as if it is trying to give us a hint. But maybe, when some of our older family has passed on or when the junior relatives live on some other side of the country, a monthly visit to a senior home or an afternoon strolling with a baby through the park might be as good of a practice as any.
Wisdom.
Perspective.
A natural way of life.
They’re all things worth searching after.
What about you? What have you learned from the aged or the young?
One Response to Lessons from The Aged and the Young
Amelia
on April 19, 2010
A couple of my most delightful experiences at the Festival of Writing were sitting next to elderly women who could have been my Grandma. I couldn’t stop smiling as I listened to their stories about their lives and what they were currently writing. And my own babies – they still know how to live as Parker Palmer says – with their mind and their soul connected, their whole being. I agree with you – we should have relationships with both!