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One Sunday, I was driving up Makakilo Drive when I saw, sitting on a bus bench, a tiny, elderly Southeast Asian woman. She was dressed in a business suit and angled on the bench to face traffic. In her hand were leaflets that she showed to drivers passing by.

My imagination created a story for her. She was a member of one of the evangelical churches meeting nearby. Her pastor has preached a sermon exhorting members to follow the charge at the end of the Book of Mathew to go out into the world to preach the gospel. She was far too shy to preach, but she could, and would, pass out leaflets.

There was little chance a driver, accelerating up the hill, would stop. A pedestrian did, a young man walking toward town. She offered him a flyer. He took it. Neither spoke, He was well down the hill before he crumpled the paper. She continued to face the traffic.

Later that day, I was working in the yard when several well-dressed people approached on foot. The older man greeted me and commented on how there is always something to be done in one’s yard. It seemed obvious that they were from a church group, and he confirmed my hunch by asking if I had a few moments to watch a video about reading the Bible.

He was gracious as I explained that we are Congregationalists, part of the United Church of Christ, so no, I would not take those few moments to watch his video.

As they left, I remembered another time and place where Judy and I asked a question that can be hard to answer.

What do your beliefs, particularly your religious beliefs if you have them, require of you?

The other time and place was a late morning at Bat Cave Temple on southeastern Bali. We saw a long line of men and women waiting patiently in the hot sun carrying loads of fruits and vegetables as offerings. The line moved, but slowly. It seemed that every person endured considerable discomfort waiting in that line. We were hot and sweaty just watching.

We asked ourselves, what do the faithful do in our country that might compare to this line of believers? More to the point, what do we do?

Students of mine who are Mormon have taken two years out of their young lives to go away from home to share their beliefs. I am certain that not everyone responds kindly to a knock on the front door by two people wanting to talk about their faith. Canvassing members of Jehovah’s Witnesses could likely tell similar stories. How intense must one’s belief be to endure daily rejection because you want to share it?

In history, how many wars have been rooted in religious belief and rivalry? How many religions have claimed to be the one true faith?

The woman on the bench was a far cry from a Crusader or a jihadist, in terms of the nature of her action. Yet she was not content just to attend church regularly, tithe, and pray for the sick.

In the poem “The Second Coming,” W.B. Yeats write: “The best lack all conviction, while the worst, are full of passionate intensity,” in describing a world in which things seemed to be falling apart because the center cannot hold. I have not held conviction with passionate intensity; I don’t feel myself to fit either of Yeats’ extremes.

In fact, I have lived thus far resisting extremes, or so I believe. We People of a Certain Age might inevitably grow past any extremes of youth as a function of aging. But I think our upbringing in 20^th century American bred us for moderation, anti-war and civil rights demonstrations notwithstanding. There has been safety in the center, right?

So it has seemed in terms of religious conviction as well. The majority of religious Americans call themselves Christian. Most Christian churches have programs to feed the hungry and visit the sick. Few Christian churches expect members to go door to door with leaflets. Fewer still would seriously exhort members to take up arms to defend the faith.

My friends who do not hold religious convictions might be reassured about now that they have avoided the situation I have described. Maybe they are the lucky ones.

My beliefs require me to act kindly and generously. Would I act otherwise if I did not believe? My belief expects me to model charity toward others without asking me to knock on the doors of strangers to explain my belief. My belief includes the importance of churches and their collective work to serve the needs of others without asking me to stand in line with fruit as an offering.

My belief does not ask me to take up arms or sit on a bench passing out leaflets. My belief seems free of passionate intensity.

Daniel E. White

July 11, 2016

The other day, I went to the Post Office, the one in the building where we worked in the days when our school was being built, and we needed a temporary office. I got off the elevator and was surprised by a feeling; that because something important in my life had happened in that building, I hoped it would stay just like this forever.

I took stock of my surroundings. The floor of the elevator was the same green tile it has always been. The buttons for each story were metal, rectangular, six inches wide and available to riders on each side of the car, a mark in my mind of sure elegance.

One exits the elevator to face a fourteen foot rounded wooden bench that makes a graceful arc, fashioned of koa. Behind the bench are artificial palms that look real and classy. To the left is the mail drop for the earliest pick-up in the area—9 a.m.—and brass-colored drinking fountains. The adjacent restrooms require keys to open—for the men, too—a notice that not just everyone is welcome to use them. Once, our office had merited keys!

The tile-floored lobby has a high ceiling and four heavy glass and metal doors on each side. Everything about that lobby is substantial, tasteful, a reflection of power and money.

Visitors to our office, if they parked in the building, came through those hallmarks of class and confidence. That introduction to Island Pacific Academy could not have hurt us as a school yet-to-be-built.

People of a Certain Age, have you ever visited your old neighborhoods? Have you had the sensation that the house, the yard, the street where you lived are, now that you have years of perspective, smaller than you had remembered? Have you, nonetheless, recalled playmates or features of your house fondly, with particular items sparking specific memories?

I have. And I appreciate the nostalgia these visits spark. It is like touching yourself at a stage in your life you have already transcended.

The feeling, in this case, was different. Nothing looked smaller. There was something proprietary about my feeling, like I owned some piece of what I was seeing. The elevator and lobby have remained the same since the first day I saw it in 2002. The familiarity of the space buoys my spirit.

To get to our office, one exited toward the bank and turned right. We were the corner complex, with desks for three people aligned in an L shape around a conference room where Judy and I met every family interested in the school.

The U.S. Army recruiter is there now. They had been our neighbors. Moving to our spot has given them curb exposure on a busy street. I’ve never been back inside the office since the day we gave up the space. I have no particular feeling about it, at least not like the way I felt today about the lobby.

Of course, it was in the office that all the work of putting together the school was accomplished. Larry worked with the potential funders, contractors, architects and such in the conference room. Judy collected information about prospective families, tested kids, conducted interviews, and worked with me to develop some policies. I set up a payroll system and benefits package, met teacher candidates, and sketched out programs.

No work ever happened in the lobby or the elevator. So why the feeling?

Those years in the building were the only ones I spent as an adult in an office building other than one of a school or university campus. Big deal. Once at one’s desk, one office can be pretty much like any other.

Perhaps the scale of what we were doing affected my thinking about the building. After all, we were planning and constructing over 80,000 square feet distributed over five stories in two edifices serving students in grades JK through 12 and the employment of more than 100 people.

Or maybe getting out of that elevator and walking through the lobby, which I do any time I go to the Post Office, reminds me that the planning actually produced a viable school now 13 years old serving over 500 students every year. It is always good to be reminded of one’s successes.

A building gives the illusion of permanence. So my odd feeling is, in fact, tied to an illusion. The building will not last forever. A new owner might move the bench, retile the green floor, decorate the lobby differently. A building is NOT that something “to stay on and be staid,” such as the star Robert Frost invites us to find in his poem “Take Something Like a Star.”

As long as it remains the same, and as long as I go through it to the Post Office, I expect I will have a memory of that strange feeling of today, that something important in my life happened in that building. And it will be a happy memory.

Daniel E. White

June 14, 2016

 

I ran into a friend downtown recently. He is a loyal reader of “About Aging “and frequently responds to me with his own great stories. I asked how he was doing.

“Getting close to 80,” he reminded me. “And more and more, I am attending funerals.” I made some comment about that being a consequence of aging.

He replied, “Maybe you should write something about death. See what others are thinking.” Later, he wrote, “I’m not afraid of it like I was once but I am still apprehensive about it.” He went on to express the hope that those who survived him would not encounter complications that were a consequence of his passing.

Last year, I did write something about death, tying it in the title to the word “dignity.” I did not assume that my friend’s encouragement to muse about death was an invitation to re-visit past thoughts. I think his comment was directing me to the realities of death and how people think about the end of their earthly days.

Memorial Day is one of the days on the calendar when we think about death. The day honors those who died in service to our country. I doubt that anyone entered the military with the intent of dying, but every one going to war knew that his or her death was a possible outcome. If any feared death, they overcame the fear and served.

The day each of us was born, the sand of our allotted time began its downward journey. All of us started with the instinct to survive. Along the way, some died earlier than others, through illness, accident or, too often, by their own hand, apparently having lost that instinct.

For some, perhaps for you, a Person of a Certain Age who likely has fewer days ahead to live than the number you have lived already, fear of death is real. Think about that: the inevitable outcome of life is the object of fear. No wonder death gets talked about so little.

Some writers declare death preferable to a miserable life of pain or guilt. Inviting “everlasting sweet sleep” to come seems another way to romanticize death. Perhaps there are fates worse than death, but not for those who fear it.

We tell jokes about death, like when Jerry Seinfeld, chatting with Gary Shandling, not long before Shandling’s death, laments the passing of another comedian, David Brenner, for “all the material left unwritten.” Or we laugh at witty last words, like those attributed to Bob Hope who, when asked by his wife where he wished to have his ashes scattered, is reported to have responded “surprise me.”

Persons of faith believe in an afterlife that is more desirable than earthly existence. I remember wondering as a child why, if such a place existed, folks didn’t want to die sooner to get there faster. I wonder, as an adult, how many persons of faith still fear death since no one can confirm what happens on the other side of death; one must believe.

I count my mother as a person of strong faith. She says about death that she does not fear it. But, she is always a bit apprehensive about starting a journey to a place she has never been before.

Some without faith seem okay with the idea of oblivion. Becoming dust, in this way of thinking, is just what happens, and there is no sense in fretting about it. It’s part of the natural cycle of things.

In my life, I have seen death come as a blessing. My father suffered a heart attack and stroke simultaneously but only the heart attack was detected and treated promptly. So he spent his last days trapped in a twisted body, aware of his surroundings, undoubtedly thinking but unable to communicate with us in any way that we could understand. I have felt the unfairness of death taking a person whose life of service to others was cut short well before the time one expects death to come these days.

There are no words that can allay the fear of death because fear is irrational and seldom can logical, rational thought displace the raw emotion of fear.

This is what makes Memorial Day important to me. Some who must have feared death went to war anyway. I thought about that the day Judy and I visited Omaha Beach and the Normandy Cemetery; brave souls faced horrific odds on D-Day. How could one not be afraid?

I have no special words for those who fear death. I don’t even know the extent to which I, in the face of imminent death, might need to overcome fear.

I do know one thing and hope another. I know that we all will walk “that lonesome valley” on our own; “nobody else can walk it for us,” regardless of how many family and friends might want to help. Death is a solitary act.

My hope is that I approach death with the same serenity as sought by those praying the prayer of Alcoholics Anonymous, the “serenity to accept the things I cannot change.”

In the meanwhile, my friend and I will be attending more funerals until that day when he and I are the guests of honor.

Daniel E. White

May 30, 2016

Meaning snuck up on me again recently. It can do that. At a moment you least expect, something happens that makes you think a little more deeply, and you never saw it coming.

In our funny language, meaning has many meanings. In this instance, I do not mean the synonym for purpose. I mean provocative, reflection-inducing, the opposite of trivial.

This time, the vessel was a play, musical theater currently wildly popular. Except in Salt Lake City. But, as you will learn, that’s a metaphor.

“The Book of Mormon” is advertised as one of the funniest Broadway plays ever. It might be. There are lots of laughs. Its reviewers cite the gentleness of the satire, about doctrinal religions in general, and Mormonism in particular. It is gentle. It does poke fun at cultural overlays of religion but not at the idea of faith.

If you were pitching the play as a book, your lead line might read “two teenage Mormon missionaries land in northern Uganda excited to spread the word of Joseph Smith and find unexpected realities.” Every point in the pitch is accurate: Mormon missionaries are believers in their youth; they go to many parts of the world; they always must deal with a host culture.

So far, the plot sounds as flat as the Book of Mormon does itself in describing the battles between the Nephites and Lamanites, as read by Elder Cunnigham in the play.

But wait. There’s so much more.

We laugh as Elder Price and Elder Cunningham lose themselves in the ecstasy of a dance routine that features an African chant. They find out that the words are actually, in the Elders’ eyes, blaspheming God. They learn, however, that the people have been visited by missionaries before who promised much would come from belief in their God, stayed a short while, and left the people no better off than they were.

At a crucial plot point, Elder Price, the star pupil, the one from whom everyone expects greatness, gives up, leaving the perennial screw-up, Elder Cunningham, with the responsibility of completing the mission.

In our years in schools, Judy and I described “90 degree” kids and “45 degree angle thinkers.” The 90 degree kids (and I was a star example of the type in high school) asked their teachers to lay out what it took to earn an A and set out to do that. They (and I) focused on the goal and went for it.

The 45 degree angle thinkers saw the world differently. Sometimes they toed the line, and sometimes they did not. Their questions were the inopportune ones that could steer a lesson off its plan. Their essays sometimes brought in points that regular minds wouldn’t.

In schools, they were always the more interesting kids. In the larger context, they are the ones who change the world. In the play, the 45 degree angle thinker is suddenly in charge. And the world changes.

To psyche himself up for the task, Elder Cunningham challenges himself to “man up,” just like Jesus did when facing crucifixion: a 21^st century version of “not my will but thine be done.”

Elder Cunningham’s teaching features Golden Plates, Joseph Smith, Brigham Young and “paradise,” Salt Lake City, staples of the story of the church. But, the specific facts and descriptions are told with vast poetic license.

The teaching works. The core messages of the faith get through, and the purpose of the missionaries is fulfilled. The people of this village in northern Uganda make the stories their own, and accept the deeper meaning.

They present their version to the Elders’ District Superintendent, whose commitment is to the literal, the dogmatic. He is not amused, and castigates Elder Cunningham’s work.

People of a Certain Age, if you are a person of faith, does every bit of your belief derive only from the precise writings you follow? Herein lies a point for deep reflection. How much has the core message of your prophet or savior been affected by the culture, customs, and history of followers? Which is more important, the words or the message?

The first of the villagers to be baptized becomes disillusioned when she hears the judgment of the District Superintendent. She complains: one more round of missionaries bringing false hope. She laments what she sees as the falseness of the stories she and her friends have made their own.

She is turned back to hope and joy, however, when a village woman assures her that everybody else there has known all along that the stories were metaphors, ways to make points about the faith.

That’s a familiar practice.

I laughed out loud, often. I marveled at the creative use of staging, lighting, and language. I applauded the music and the choreography. And I came away energized by how many powerful points worth deep reflection had been slipped into such a short and entertaining show.

If this kind of meaning is important in your life, the kind that makes you think, it is important to pay attention, wherever you are, because it can sneak up on you.

What joy when it does!

Daniel E. White

May 16, 2016

Our family stopped overnight in Lincoln, Nebraska as we relocated from South Charleston, West Virginia to Seattle. My sister and I contented ourselves during the long days of driving with a new toy each day, drawn from red, yellow, and black drawstring bags sewn and filled by Dad’s mom. We got to pet the cat, too, who was amazingly quiet (for a cat riding in a car), resigned to whatever fate his humans had in mind for him.

Cat independence will out, however. We put him in the garage provided by our motel unit (you have to be Person of a Certain Age to remember that amenity) and went off to dinner. We returned after dark to find that someone had opened our garage door, and the cat had left the scene. My five year-old self was crushed.

Cat was independent but not stupid. He hung around so that Dad was able to find him. The next morning, our traveling party intact, we drove off to our new lives in Seattle. Cat lived for quite a little while in his new digs.

Why do some memories last a lifetime? A friend and regular reader of these lines encouraged me to think and write about that question. He noted that he vividly recalls his parents’ angst over Pearl Harbor, what he was doing when JFK was shot and when the planes hit the twin towers. Equally vivid are memories of a chemical plant explosion 50 years ago and the San Francisco earthquake.

“So,” he complained, “why can’t I remember why I walked into the room?”

There is much scholarship about memory. There is understanding that sufferers of dementia often recall memories of long ago more readily than of a minute ago, although my one experience with this observation casts doubt. Judy’s step-dad, deep into Alzheimer’s, told me stories about his youth that included features of modern life in settings from before the features were invented.

Other scholars probe animal memory trying to understand how the brain programs behavior. This is akin to the muscle memory I am encouraged to develop about my golf swing though my frequency of playing leaves me deep in muscle amnesia.

The examples my friend gave involve big events. I have similar recollections about where I was when major stuff happened. So, I expect, do you. I have no explanation for my friend for this shared proclivity to connect a personal relationship to a cataclysmic event, except to say that magnitude probably matters. An assassination or killer earthquake is likely to demand a place in the CPU of my memory.

More puzzling to me are memories like mine of Lincoln, Nebraska in November 1951. I know that some of the things I claim as memory are actually a response to a photo I have seen, giving me a graphic image to record. So, for example, I don’t actually remember crawling out of the dog house in the backyard in South Charleston at age three wearing a snow suit and looking cute, but I can conjure that “memory” even as I write these words because I have seen the photo.

There was no photo of the garage at the motel. There is no picture of the red, yellow, and black drawstring bags sewn by my grandmother. Yet, in the theater of my mind, those pictures are as vivid as that dog house.

There is another powerful image I carry around for which there is no photograph. It is of Mr. Carey’s 11^th grade English classroom in September, 1962. I am sitting in the back of the center row of desks. Directly in front of me is a dark-haired girl I thought I might like even though she was Catholic (we carried odd prejudices in those days). In front and to my left in the 2^nd seat in her row along the windows sat another dark-haired girl wearing a two-toned blue and white horizontally striped sweater.

Mr. Carey offered two free tickets to that week’s home football game to students willing to pass out programs at the game. (It was only later that I realized that the tickets were not, technically speaking, free if I had to work for them but I was date-surfing and therefore distracted). I intended to ask one of those girls and get a “free” date.

I can’t recall all of the reasons why I chose as I did. What I do recall, as clearly as I recall anything, is that scene of Mr. Carey, the two girls, and me.

I chose well. 54 years later, we are still together. That would qualify as a major event for me.

When my brother and I get together, invariably he will say “remember when” and start some memory of his about something we did together many years ago that I cannot recall. I joke that I should interview him to find out about my life. It is obvious that I do not have an extraordinary capacity for memory. (On NPR was the story of a man who remembers everything and the burden that is.)

Maybe one day science will answer my friend’s question. I won’t hurry to know why. Good times, bad times, times of big events, charming little details; all of these comprise my memory for unknown reasons. I’m okay with the mystery.

How about you?

Daniel E. White

May 2, 2016

Hobie, the furniture restorer in Donna Tartt’s best-selling The Goldfinch: A Novel told young Theo that he had thought he would study history and become a professor at Notre Dame. That’s my road not traveled, said Hobie. Maybe by restoring things, he thought, I’m involved in history anyway.

The road not traveled. People of a Certain Age, how many such roads define the map of your life?

I recall a super-highway or two, a few freeways, more two-lane roads, endless dirt tracks not taken. Every choice I have made picked a path and left others unexplored.

In college, I had summer jobs with U.S. National Bank and Pacific Telephone. Each firm had programs designed to attract college graduates to join the ranks of management trainees. There were limited financial incentives for junior management, but as we all know, high-ranking officers of banks and communications firms have done well financially in the past forty years. Who knows? Maybe I would have been one of them.

Instead, I chose graduate school. When I was 14, my older sister predicted I would become a history professor (like Hobie). My dad, a minister, had, I think, hoped that I would follow in his footsteps. Either version of me required a graduate education. So, goodbye corporate titan me.

I was admitted to graduate school in Political Science at the University of Washington and the School of Theology at Claremont. The choice was really about the discipline in which I would be a professor: Political Science or Sacred Theology. I chose the former.

Did I mention there was a war going on then? Graduating from college, even though married, I was likely to be classified ready to travel, courtesy of the U.S. government. Instead, I applied for a couple of draft classifications other than 1-A and ultimately ended up flunking a physical for alternative service. That process offered a host of roads to take or not. Happily for me, the ones I took kept me out of the insanity of war.

When I finished my dissertation in 1973, I was offered the chance for a promotion in the administration at the University of California, Riverside and an Assistant Professor in Political Science position at California State University, Fullerton. I was mistakenly under the impression that the teaching job was a one-year replacement. I learned that I was turning down a tenure-track position when I called the department chair to decline the offer.

Not becoming a full-time college professor or a minister were a freeway-sized professional choice roads not taken.

Deciding whom to marry was a super highway choice and, of course, required another person to make a complementary choice. The 49 years we have been happily married suggest that choice has worked out well.

At one time, I thought that a parlor game, played with friends, in which each person described what his or her life might have been had a different road been chosen, might be a fun way to learn more about your friends. Hobie’s comment to Theo in The Goldfinch came with the hint of disappointment. I rejected my parlor game idea because of the danger of digging up deep disappointments buried under the years of making the journey on the road taken as rewarding and pleasant as possible.

There are roads not taken by others that you applaud openly. My mom could have pursued a career in radio in New York in the 1940s—she had the education and a growing body of experience—had she not left that option to marry my dad. Thanks, Mom.

There are roads you might like to have taken that were abruptly closed off to you. I wanted to attend the Air Force Academy for college and then fly planes. I found out that I was 25 days too young to enter after I finished high school at age 16 years, 10 months. I could not see myself waiting around for a year to start college. As history unfolded, being a military pilot in 1968 was a different proposition than it had been when I aspired to apply in 1963. I was in a different frame of mind, too.

And there are roads one dreams about taking that are completely irrational. It was only size, speed and talent that kept me from the goal of succeeding Mickey Mantle in center field for the New York Yankees. But in my mind…

I am among the fortunate who, at least at the conscious level, have no regrets about roads not taken. I admit to occasional curiosity. But, my life at this point, dotted as it has been by ups and downs, is simply result of the arc of my life, the facts that have resulted from thousands of choices made.

Thinking about the road not taken is ultimately an exercise in fantasy. Visiting Fantasyland can be fun, but most rides at the real Fantasyland go around in circles.

And you know? I teach classes at the university and pray periodically in public; little glimpses of my roads not taken.

Daniel E. White

April 18, 2016

People of a Certain Age, if you are retired, perhaps you have been party to something like the following exchange:

Acquaintance. Dan! How’re you doing? How are you liking retirement?

Dan: I’m loving it.

Acquaintance: Keeping busy?

Dan: (Lists a litany of activities that make his calendar so full.)

Acquaintance: Wow! Certainly an active retirement!

Dan: Seems like I am just as busy as when I was working. The difference is that I can choose what I do.

Why do I and countless others who have retired from active and successful careers feel obliged to be seen as doing?

I once described this as Newly Retired Syndrome. Said I hoped I would outgrow it.

It is going on three years now since I retired. That stretches the definition of new. There must be something else at work.

I asked Mom about this one time. She said that, at her age, she sometimes asks herself to “justify taking up space on earth.” I suspect you don’t need to be 95 to ask that question of yourself. There are books about purpose-driven lives written by people a lot younger than Mom.

Pico Iyer, the famed travel writer, gave a TED talk in 2014 called “The Art of Stillness.” He has made a good living going places and doing things, then writing about the goings and the doings in an artful fashion. He says, though, that his life has required stillness from time to time, not going, not doing, not writing. He spoke of “sitting still, turning sights into insights.”

Being still can serve a purpose. Can it be a form of doing?

“How’s it going, Mr. Spaeckle?” asks the little fellow in the comic strip, “Frazz,” drawn by Jeff Mallett. “More things to do than hours in the day,” replies Spaeckle. In the next frame, Frazz says, “For some reason, grown ups don’t think that’s a good thing.”

I mis-read Frazz the first time. I thought he said, “For some reason, grown-ups think that is a good thing.” That fit neatly into my mindset about the urge to be seen as busy, even when retired.

The correct reading of Frazz’s comment gets at Mom’s point. Having a reason or purpose to get up in the morning, as Judy puts it, makes getting up in the morning easier. Maybe the trick is to define purpose differently.

Many of us were raised to see as heroic those people who accomplished great things while harried and drawn in multiple directions at once. Yes, sister, you can have it all. Yes, brother, you can run the company, serve on three boards (two voluntary, one paid), play well in club tournaments, not miss any school event involving your offspring to which parents are invited, etc.

A work-life-career like that is bound to create patterns of living that influence life beyond the last day of a paycheck. The habits of a lifetime don’t disappear overnight.

“There is nothing good or bad but thinking makes it so” wrote Shakespeare in “Hamlet.”

Retirement gives us time: to think, to see, to hear, to turn sights into insights. If I need to come up with a purpose, could I come to see being, thinking, seeing, hearing as important ways of doing? If Shakespeare was right, I’m in control on that challenge.

The actress, Sally Field, stars in the movie “Hello, My Name is Doris.” Field says about her reason for doing the film the following: Doris is a “wonderful person to look at on entering one’s 70s. As human beings, I think our challenge is, will we be open to what is waiting for us to find out about ourselves?”

If we take the time to think, to turn sights into insights, we will find out about ourselves. I suspect that many of us who have lived the harried life, pulled in multiple directions, were quite comfortable putting off finding out about ourselves.

What we People of a Certain Age might discover is a purpose only we can serve, valued, perhaps, more than we had ever thought; the sharing of our experience.

In the March 25, 2016 edition of The Week, gerontologist Karl Pillemer advises readers about a way for them to ease their anxieties: “ask an older person.” Writing about the urge to find a purpose in life, Pillemer reports that older folks say “relax.” “They say that you are likely to have a number of purposes, which will shift as you progress through life,” he writes.

Pillemer recommends that younger people consider asking the advice of older people as they move through life for the simple reason that the older people have lived through more parts of life.

Have you imagined sharing your insights based on your experiences as an important purpose for you in later life? NPR’s “Story Corps” featured a man in hospice who was disappointed each morning he woke up until, as happened each day, someone sought out his counsel, even about small stuff. Who is waiting for your wise counsel?

Being still. Relaxing about this purpose-driven life stuff and simply sharing your experience with others, urging them to relax. There is a theme emerging here.

 

Daniel E. White

April 4, 2016

Cho-Liang Lin, popularly known as Jimmy, recently played Mozart’s Violin Concert #4 in D major with the Hawaii Symphony Orchestra. Before the concert, Jimmy educated us about Mozart’s flurry of concerti compositions and extolled the genius of the young man of Salzburg. He asked if any of us had a question.

The first question was not about Mozart. The woman asked what it was like to travel around the world carrying a 300 year-old violin made in 1715 by Stradivarius. I don’t think I have ever been in the presence of something other than a building that was made so long ago and still used regularly.

Jimmy replied that he needed to balance practicality—he needed to take his violin to concerts—with careful stewardship of the “Titian,” a violin so valued that it is known by the name of a major Renaissance artist.

He went on to tell a story about a previous owner of some fame—Efrem Zimbalist—who, when he heard that Titian might be for sale, moved heaven and earth to get to Europe to buy it before anyone else could.

Clearly, Jimmy sees his responsibility to be a good steward of something knowledgeable people value.

People of a Certain Age, what do we value in such a way that we acknowledge our responsibility to be good stewards?

The concert took place the day before I flew to San Diego to see my mother. She had developed an infection that required hospitalization and therapy, and I saw her at a low moment. Happily, she rallied quickly, regaining what she calls her “attitude.”

Mom has lived since 1920. She lives a comfortable, by no means opulent, life, visited frequently by younger people who seem to value the wisdom of a 95 year-old. She always tells people “I have had a good life.”

Mom has been a good steward of life, responsibly caring for a gift she was given without asking. We might ask ourselves, have we been good stewards of the gift of life?

Central to her life have been the many people whom she has loved and who love her. Tending to her relationships has been another opportunity for stewardship. She was raised an only child. Yet she carried away from her upbringing a genuine concern for others, a tribute to her parents and to her lifelong faith in God.

She loved and cared for two husbands, one for 56 years, the second for 9 years. Give her the chance, and she will explain how she attended to the needs of her husbands and received their nurture in return. One never knows for sure, but it seems she took little for granted in those relationships.

She writes notes to people in their times of need. When a friend calls, she makes that person the center of her attention. She delights in being valued by others as one who makes them feel better after talking with her.

Do we ever think about life and relationships as needing to be stewarded?

In my work days, I often used the word “stewardship” when appealing for financial support for the schools I served. Of course I borrowed the term from my upbringing in the church. There was always a Stewardship Sunday, usually in November, at which the preacher preached about the importance of members making financial pledges for the coming year. One friend in the pulpit once observed that he felt he preached a Stewardship Sermon every Sunday: preach badly often enough and watch the membership numbers dive.

In our schools, it wasn’t hard to make the case (except when we founded a school) that people in the past had passed on to us a vibrant community of learners, teachers, and families, and that we were now obligated to pass along an equally strong school to future learners, teachers, and families.

Being a good steward in this way connects us with a past and a future. I value that connectedness.

The current political climate in the US might be helped if we voters re-affirmed our roles as stewards. Partly in jest, I have suggested to friends that they find a person on the opposite side of the political spectrum to take to lunch. There would be three toasts.

The first would be to preserve a system of government and politics where each person can express political opinions without fear of being shot or imprisoned.

The second would be that the conversation to follow would be about ideas and opinions, even about possible common ground, without any inferences about intelligence or family background.

Then over lunch, the debate would unfold. Whenever the exchanges ended, there would be a third toast; the first toast repeated, each person affirming responsibility for the wholeness of the system that encourages people to speak their minds without fear.

We steward what is valuable, what we value. For Jimmy Lin, part of the deal as steward of the Titian is to use this venerated, seasoned, beautiful instrument to play beautiful music.

As the steward of her life and her relationships, Mom has done the same.

Dan White

March 21, 2016

All Quiet on the Western Front by Erich Remarque has been made into films since its publication in 1929, one of which I showed every year to my AP US History classes. The German boy, played by Richard Thomas in the version I used, was witness to the slow and excruciatingly painful death of a good friend.

When the boys went off to war, the deceased’s mother had specifically charged the Richard Thomas character to “look after her boy.”

So it was that when he came back on leave, the soldier sought out the mother to grieve with her. For a time, she seemed to blame him for not adequately looking after her son. Then she looks at the young man and asks, “Did he die quickly?”

Several academic studies in recent years have explored the question of whether or not people tell the truth. We might hope that the answer is yes.

If so, we would have cause to worry. There is evidence to suggest that most of us manage to mis-state the truth or outright lie more than any of us think ourselves capable of doing.

I can’t argue the merits of the studies. Instead, I take their point to suggest that we People of a Certain Age, indeed, people of any age, develop tendencies that we might wish we had not.

I wonder how many of us are completely honest all the time about how we feel. Generally, a person who asks “how’re you doing” is not intending to receive a full report on your latest health concern. So, the usual response is “fine,” even when you are not. Is that dishonest?

Have you ever been asked, “How do I look?” by someone whose clothes look ill-matched or whose face looks gray and ghostly? Don’t you usually find something to compliment rather than blurting out your real thoughts?

Hank Ketchum has drawn many Dennis the Menace cartoons in which Dennis repeats something his parents have said about someone to that someone, to the horror of his parents. Real children also have the capacity to share unfiltered comments about what they see or feel.

Growing up seems to be, among other things, a matter of making judgments about what to say when. We all notice adults who, for whatever reasons, say exactly what is on their minds. Their filters are less well developed.

I believe most people, when faced with big issues, tell the truth. Perhaps they received the same advice as I did as a child, to “tell the truth so you don’t have to remember the story you told.” I believe most people, for example, would not lie if the lie would endanger another person.

Some Big Lies are found out, with major consequences. We People of a Certain Age remember Watergate, where the cover-up (read web of lies) cost the President his job. Do you believe, as I do, that this is merely one among too many Big Lies, with President Nixon unlucky that his was found out?

Perhaps editing one’s comments about how another person looks or resisting the urge to explain exactly how you feel when asked don’t even qualify as lies.

So, is the absence of the truth a lie?

We have heard about people telling doctors to reveal the whole truth about one’s condition, holding nothing back, and doctors being ready to do so. We have also heard about families who collaborate with a doctor to shield the ill person from the truth.

Is there such a thing as a compassionate lie that passes muster as the right thing to do?

Once as a school head, I put a value on telling the truth in a tangible way. Three boys were caught drunk on campus. The penalty was expulsion. Two lied, claiming they had not been drinking. One told the truth, admitting that all three had done so. I made all three get counseling about alcohol and did not dismiss any of the three. I was criticized by hard-liners about alcohol on campus. They would have had me expel the one who told the truth and let the liars stay? Really?

My scholarly sister has noted the book, Lie to Me, by Paul Ekman in which the author asserts that, in specific ways, one’s body reveals when one is lying. Knowing these ways helps crime investigators and job interviewers. Chances are, unfortunately, that these ways are less obvious than Pinocchio’s nose.

Do I need to become savvy as well to maximize my ability to tell when I am being told a “little white lie?” (This is a term I have not liked for obvious reasons!)

No doubt, you and I think ourselves to be honest people. When it comes to big issues, my conscience is clear. Maybe I have uttered a few untruths here and there along the way. Does that make me a dishonest person?

Does an honest person lie, ever?

If you had been the German soldier, how would you have answered the grieving mother?

In the movie, the solider says, “He died quickly.”

Not once in all the times I watched the film was I ever convinced that she believed him.

Daniel E. White

March 7, 2016

Judy is our books-on-tape. She reads out loud when we drive any distance from a book we choose together. We spend pre-dinner moments occasionally on our lanai in similar fashion, fortified with wine and snacks.

River Town, Peter Hessler’s book about his time in the Peace Corps in China in the 1990s, is one we have read. He told the story about how Deng Xiaoping, credited with opening China to capitalism “in its Chinese form,” answered questions about Mao Tse-Dung who, seemingly, would not have pursued the same course as Deng.

“Mao was 70% correct, 30% wrong,” Deng would say. Hessler reports that Chinese students quote Deng anytime they are asked to compare and contrast these two larger-than-life leaders of China since the revolution in 1948.

Baseball fans would observe that .700 is an unbelievable batting average, a poor fielding percentage, and an epic winning percentage for a team. Being correct 70% of the time on a test earns one a low average grade on most grading scales. Picking the right stocks seven out of ten times could make you wealthy if you picked seven really good stocks to offset the three stinkers. Any U.S. President would welcome a 70% approval rating, and only one has ever gotten anywhere near that level of support in an election.

Presumably, Deng Xiaoping would have lumped the Cultural Revolution and the devastating Great Leaps Forward that resulted in famine as among Mao’s 30%. Leading the 1948 Revolution, molding a strong state, and writing a Little Red Book that promises a communal Utopia would be in the 70%. I wonder where the fact that a lot of people were killed along the way fits into the 70%-30% rating?

People of a Certain Age, how does 70%-30% work in your life?

Were you ever responsible for hiring? An early mentor cautioned me not to expect to do better than pick the right candidate who would excel in the work and stay a long time 50% of the time. I remember scoffing (privately; he was my boss). Looking back on all the hires I have made, I can’t say whether he was right or I got to 70%-30%. I am not foolish enough to think I got it right 100% of the time. I had to let go too many mistakes I made.

What about financial decisions? In terms of housing purchases, the percentage of homes that Judy and I have sold for a higher amount than we bought, an aspiration most home buyers have, is about 70%. At least we are among the fortunate for whom the 30% consists of houses sold for the purchase price, though we often joke about being in the “buy high, sell low” category of investors.

Parents, were 70% of your decisions about your kids the right decisions? Maybe you earned a better score. Maybe not. Maybe your kids would be as diplomatic as Deng if asked to rate your record of success.

The 70%-30% measure will annoy those who see things in black and white. If you are like me, the color palette of your life features lots of gray, too. Professionally and personally, I have too often had to decide about something without being certain that I had all the information germane to the issue. I advise graduate students aspiring to school leadership that “I believe I am right, but I could be wrong” is not a bad or weak way to present oneself to one’s followers. I hope I am judged to have followed my own advice.

I find myself in good company. New York Supreme Court Justice Learned Hand once wrote, in his book, The Spirit of Liberty, published in 1944 that, “…the spirit of liberty is the spirit that is not too sure that it is right; the spirit liberty is the mind which seeks to understand the minds of other men and women.”

I have known folks, and you have, too, who say that no human is perfect and then proceed to pontificate with the certainty of their rightness. Likewise, I know people whose sense of self is that they are seldom right or qualified. I prefer the company of people between those extremes, those closer to the 70-30 measure.

Of course, if one’s 30% includes conducting a holocaust, all bets are off. There are moral dimensions to 70%-30%.

I don’t think any of us start out striving for anything less than 100%. “Anything worth doing is worth doing well,” I hear my Dad talking in my head. The kicker is how you define well. His criterion was “your very best effort.”

It has worked for me to keep baseball in mind. Hall of Fame batters failed nearly 70% of the time and Hall of Fame teams have won 70%. One day you lose and the chance to win comes again the next day.

Deng Xiaoping gave Mao a really big break with the 70%-30% deal. What comprises the 70% and the 30% matters, of course. Maybe, though, the proportion of Deng’s measure of Mao is not far off the reality of our lives.

Of course, I’m not 100% sure about all this…

Kung hei fat choi!

Daniel E. White

February 8, 2016