My Site

David McCullough tells of a lunch companion who was the op-ed editor of a major American newspaper. The companion had just visited the Vietnam Memorial and asked if McCullough had done.

“Yes,” McCullough replied. “On the same day I visited Antietam.”

“What’s Antietam?” his companion asked, not realizing that they were sitting little more than an hour’s drive from the site of the single bloodiest day in American military history, September 17, 1862.

People of a Certain Age might be excused if they have forgotten much of what was taught in their history classes in school, though surely they were told of the importance this battle. I’m sure I once knew how to prove the Pythagorean theorem well enough to pass Geometry, but about all I remember is that A squared plus B squared can be proved logically to equal C squared where A, B, and C are sides of a right triangle.

Pythagoras has not been particularly relevant to my daily living. Nor, for that matter, has Antietam, directly. Indirectly, though, it has. The outcome of the battle was the catalyst for President Lincoln issuing the Emancipation Proclamation. All Americans have felt the impact of that executive action.

Is it important for Americans to know major events of their shared history as a nation? I think so, but I was educated as a political scientist and have taught history (mostly U.S.) for forty years. I think it is great that naturalized citizens qualify in part on the basis of familiarity with facts about U.S. History. The assumption is that high school graduates in the U.S. know something about our history, too. There are times I worry that the newly minted Americans know more about U.S. History than average American high school graduate these days.

The question about what is important to know can apply to families, too. What family history is important for kupuna to pass along to the younger? Traditional societies have depended on the passage of knowledge about raising crops and kids, hunting, crafts, the curing of illness and so on as vehicles for the preservation of the family line. These days, many fewer of us require such knowledge in order to live. What needs to be passed along by parents, aunties and tutu kanes?

Some family history might not be pleasant. I am thinking of the image from bygone days of the crazy aunt living in the attic as much as I am about tales of infidelities and sibling disputes over inheritances. What do I need to know about what went on before me in the lives of my ancestors?

There is so much information being developed and made available these days as compared to when I graduated from high school in 1964. Young people—digital natives—have a much more intuitive grasp of the mechanics of retrieving that information than I, and clear ideas about what they think they need to know. They might ask, why do I need to know about Antietam when I can look it up on my smart phone?

Tough question. Early in my career as a school head, a parallel question came out of arithmetic: why should students learn to add when a calculator does it so much more quickly and accurately? I used to tell students that, if they know how to add the old-fashioned way, they can work when their calculator batteries die. Is it ever important to know about Antietam when you don’t have your phone near by?

Maybe we could begin to answer the question about the importance of Antietam or of knowing about Auntie in the attic by asking if that knowledge helps us understand ourselves, and the communities in which we live.

It is hard to overstate the importance of the Emancipation Proclamation in the history of the country, and it is sobering that there was so much blood spilled to create the circumstances for it to be issued. Current events suggest that the legacy of slavery still infuses relations between races in this country.

Crazy auntie in the attic might be a gentle reminder that all families aren’t perfect. Family pride is always better when accompanied by humility. Sibling disputes over who gets what when a parent dies are a much-too-frequent reminder that the love of money is, indeed, the root of evil.

Our experience tells us that Shakespeare got it right: the past is prologue. We worry that the philosopher Alfred Whitehead was also right. “He who does not learn from history is condemned to repeat it.” Americans should know about Antietam.

Knowing our collective past can help to bind us together in the present. Goodness knows we need things to bind us together in these times of political polarization and moral fractiousness. Younger people might scoff at us older folks for worrying too much about the past. We People of a Certain Age know, though, what William Faulkner understood: “The past is never dead. It’s not even past.”

Daniel E. White

September 16, 2015

When we were growing up, family vacations featured long-distance car rides, usually to campgrounds, on special occasions to air-conditioned motels with televisions. Dad always drove. Dad was a focused driver. If the goal was Lake Chelan State Park, only the need for gas caused the Pontiac to stop until we got there.

Judy reminds me that I inherited the same focus and displayed it regularly in our early married days. “Making good time” was my measure of success, generally to her displeasure. She read maps and travel guides noting the attractions we were missing as we sped toward the day’s target.

I can’t say how or when the change occurred but she must have nearly had a stroke when I said one day on a drive, “ I wonder where this road leads” and turned off the highway.

What ever was the hurry?

On a recent drive in Southern California, we took an off-ramp not taken before. We found a shopping district, a huge area like a mall in the sense that there were many stores in a small area, but like an updated Disneyland Main Street in appearance, complete with outdoor clocks on high standards and old fashioned street lamps. A fun novelty, one we had passed dozens of times before without knowing it was there.

A day or two later, I had a speaking engagement at a retirement community off Santa Monica Blvd., two blocks east of the Hollywood Freeway. The community featured a chapel that spoke of an earlier time, when even small congregations had traditional-looking sanctuaries with pipe organs and creaky wooden pews. The whole neighborhood conjured in me visions of what Los Angeles had once been like. It was a surprise visit to a past I had not known.

Countless times I have driven that freeway going from one place to some other place and missing a special place.

In San Diego, we walked through Balboa Park following no appointed schedule. From 1962 to 1964, as teenage sweethearts attending nearby San Diego High, we walked through Balboa Park following no appointed schedule, but otherwise distracted. This time we took time to notice.

We stopped to learn about the symbolic figures carved on the west entrance arch of the park, found a new museum, ate dinner at a place other than The Prado, the latter being a fine place to eat in the center of the park to which we had driven with purpose on many occasions. To top off the evening, we attended a concert at the Spreckles Organ Pavilion. In our sixty years of either living in or going to San Diego, we had never done that before. Why, we wondered?

I am not alone in making discoveries when I take the time to get off the freeway or break out of my habitual orbits. We’ve all likely wondered why it takes the visit of an out-of-town guest to get us to points of interest in our own communities.

I also know that curious people view the world as a horn-of-plenty, replete with far too many treasures to explore in any one lifetime. So, I have not beaten myself up much over failing to have done this or seen that before. We can’t do it all.

The older I get, the grumpier I become in the few days preceding a trip away from home. Once away, my grumpiness lifts immediately. I enjoy traveling, seeing new places and old friends, finding what there is to find. I am a grump because I am comfortable in my house following familiar routines, and these are hard to leave.

Invariably, I come home with great memories, glad to have made the trip. Inevitably, I repeat grumptitude a few days before the next trip. Is this a condition of many People of a Certain Age when we leave our comfortable routines?

Being retired, we have more time to get off the expressway, to break out of our usual orbit, at least in theory. We can choose what we do with our time, more so than those not yet retired. That is the gift of being retired.

I suspect, though, that if one has not broken the habit of conducting trips as mad dashes from point to point “making good time,” or one has never explored a place purely out of curiosity before retirement, these habits will be harder to develop. So, fellow People of a Certain Age, maybe we can mentor some younger folks we know in the fine art of taking one’s time on occasion.

I will say this about Dad’s way, though. We saw a lot of campgrounds and spent many days enjoying nearby wonders of nature, and we always made good time getting there.

Daniel E. White

September 2, 2015

“Danny is a fine student in all respects except that his social tendencies lead him to his leaving his seat to talk with others.” My first grade teacher nailed me for working the room at age 6. No wonder I turned out to be a headmaster.

My thoughts turned to report cards when Judy found hers from 4^th, 5^th and 6th grade. Her teachers’ messages were consistent; she does neat and careful work, is well-liked by her classmates; she is motivated to see problems and then fix them; she expects others to give their best effort, too. No mention of content—good with numbers, writes well, caught on to quantum mechanics quickly—just statements about form and behavior.

There was one strand of criticism of Judy in 4^th and half of 5^th grade; needs to work on penmanship. Then, when whatever issues were corrected, the next report card congratulated her for working so hard to improve her penmanship.

Teachers worried about different things in 1950s San Diego.

Your memories of grade school are, no doubt, colored by the quality of your teachers—caring or too strict, understanding or indifferent to circumstances, a good explainer or not. Did the comments written by your teacher bear any resemblance to the person you turned out to be?

The comments about Judy might have been short on evaluating content mastery but she has always been one to try to fix problems she sees, and she expects others to do their best.

I have been working the room on and off since first grade. When Mom told me about my first grade teacher’s comment, I was surprised. I have always considered myself an introvert who needs to screw up the courage and energy to wade into a crowd and be chatty. However, there is a career full of evidence to back up that teacher’s judgment.

Judy and I grew up to become teachers, charged with the responsibility of writing report cards. I’d like to think that my students and their parents benefited from the feedback I provided. But I’ll never know.

There was one comment I wished I could have written on occasion but dared not. “Johnny does a good job of compensating for his hereditary deficiencies.” There were kids we both felt would have benefited by attending a distant boarding school or, in a few circumstances, a “parent-ectomy.” Harsh judgments, perhaps unfair. Teachers are human, though, and some parents seemed a burden to the development of their children. A far cry from fretting about penmanship.

As a school head, I once asked a colleague raised in Britain to edit his comment on a report card. “Brian is something of a twit,” he wrote. I pointed out that “twit” carried different meetings on either side of the Atlantic. He chose “Brian can be fidgety in class” instead.

What we teachers wrote mattered, and what today’s teachers write (though in some school districts, they just mark canned phrases indicated by numbers) matters. Those comments imprint themselves on kids, even ones who seem to care less about school. Indeed, kids internalize comments from parents, pastors, teachers, and coaches a great deal as they strive to figure out who they are and what their purpose in the world might be.

Who said what about you once? What have you ever said about someone that you now regret?

One late afternoon at Webb School, a junior in my AP US History class came to my door. He was in the midst of what seemed to me a form of clinical depression. “Dr. White,” he began, “the psychologist said I should come to you directly as a first step to my healing. You said something on my report card about me…” I don’t remember the rest of what he said, I do remember my sadness that something I had written, probably with the best of intentions, had led to weeks of misery for him. He got better quickly after that moment I confronted my own unintended insensitivity.

In your career, if you have worked for someone else who evaluated you regularly, especially on a checklist or form, you never escaped the report card. Sharp comments can still sting even after graduation, right?

At a headmaster’s conference, sixty of us agreed that, on our evaluations over time, our strengths remained our strengths and our weaknesses remained our weaknesses. We could compensate by “hiring to our weaknesses,” a principle of good leadership.   You had to know your weaknesses, though. Honest self-evaluation is a valuable form of assessment.

If I land in Heaven, I doubt there will be a report card waiting at the Pearly Gates. I could be wrong. If so, I hope it says “Danny lived a fine life in all respects except that his social tendencies led to leaving his seat to talk with others.”

Daniel E. White

August 19, 2015

Whenever Uncle Gene, Judy and I were out in public together, he would make up fantastic short bios of passersby, based on their appearance and his imagination. We could never know if any of the data were true, but we laughed about the plausibility and picked up the habit.

Whenever Uncle Gene saw a feat of architectural or natural wonder, he would deadpan, “wasn’t easy” as though he had been in charge of design and construction. We laughed more.

Chad and Mom rediscovered each other after 70 years. Each had been married for 56 of those years and were now in their 80s, getting married. They laughed with each other incessantly, and reveled in the chance to tell their unlikely story of romance to whomever would listen. The listener always went away happier.

Sonny’s round face broke into a smile effortlessly. You could wonder if he was ever not smiling. I think his nickname was spelled with an “o” as the second letter, but if it was with a “u,” it was descriptive. He was generous in fact and in spirit.

Aunt Jane (no relation to Uncle Gene; the Whites were serial adopters of aunties and uncles well before we got to Hawaii where everybody is an auntie or uncle) would read the newspaper daily searching for stories of men or women she felt needed a word of encouragement, and she would write the person a letter. Many times, the recipient responded months or even years later with gratitude, noting that her kind words were among the few expressions of support he or she had received.

The muse of my writing about Aging, Jo, was always ready with a story, told with a puckish twinkle in her eye, from her long and interesting life, the point of which was to cheer the listener. She was so good at that, I never realized that, at the same time, she was nursing her husband through his terminal struggle with cancer.

These are the people about whom Albert Schweitzer wrote: “In everybody’s life, at some time, our inner fire goes out. It is then burst into flames by an encounter with another human being. We should all be thankful for those people who rekindle the inner spirit.”

The folks above all were People of a Certain Age and even older. I am not alone, I suspect, in holding in high esteem people who have lived seven, eight, or nine decades and maintained a positive outlook on life.

But younger people can be rekindlers, too. I can right away think of three teenagers I see with some regularly who project an attitude of joy and demonstrate extraordinary responsibility and interest in being helpful. One cannot be with any of these kids without thinking that the future of the world and our country might not be as bleak as the daily headlines make it seem.

 

I think my examples of rekindlers might have needed an occasional freshening of their fires, too. Here’s where I might part company with Dr. Schweitzer, as bold as that might seem.

 

Implied in the quote is the assertion that there are certain people with the capacity. I think most everyone has the capacity. It is a matter of attitude and effort. And, if the term “rekindling” is correct, then there needs to be an amber to enflame.

 

Dr. Schweitzer is right about people sometimes losing the inner fire. Moods change, temperaments can be affect by circumstance, sorrow and grief are seemingly inevitable companions at some points in life. But, the ember of hope is there to be stoked.

You and I could be stokers—rekindlers—if we try. Winnie-the-Pooh is instructive here. Eeyore, the donkey, always looks on the depressing side of things. If you spend all of your time in the company of Eeyores, you might become like them. It is hard to see an ember of optimism in Eeyore.

Winnie-the-Pooh is congenitally optimistic, often recklessly so. But in his innocence and silliness (silly old bear, say Christopher Robin), there is a joy about living, the excitement of trying, and an appreciation of his friends who help him get out of scrapes.

Spend time with the Winnies around you.

One of many traits common to my rekindlers above is the gift of laughter. And smiles. Especially smiles. Smiles are so disarming.

Something else. The act of reaching out to rekindle is rekindling in itself. It is cheap therapy. Next time you feel like your inner fire is floundering, try rekindling another.

 

Daniel E. White

August 7, 2015

Folks attending a small church in Chicago one Sunday were stunned when their pastor invited all members to pick up a $500 check as they left the sanctuary. That is a different kind of Stewardship Sunday experience!

On the NPR program, “Here and Now,” the pastor who issued the invitation explained that the church had made a $1000 investment several years ago at the invitation of a wealthy parish member, using $1000 he donated to add to the several thousand dollars the man was investing for himself. The donor’s intent was to help the church create a revenue source from earnings on investments. The church struggled to meet its budget each year as many churches do, and a regular revenue source would help.

Recently, the church member cashed in the investment. The church’s share was $1.6 million. As the “Here and Now” reporter noted, that was quite a return on investment.

A natural assumption would be that, well-invested, the money could insure that there would be few worries about budget again. The minister had another idea.

Why not, she thought, do a reverse tithe? Take 10% of the total and distribute it equally among the members for them to use as they saw fit?

The uses varied. Most found philanthropic purposes. One used the $500 to pay her rent. She did not elicit any bad feeling from the others because paying the rent bought a month where she did not have to choose between food and medication.

The pastor preached on the Parable of the Talents that Sunday. The story describes how a master gave three servants sums of money for a period of time. Two servants invested and doubled their money. The third buried his sum for fear of losing it. The Parable engendered much discussion after that Sunday.

Was donating the money to a food bank or the fight against Ebola akin to investing it? What would constitute burying the money?

The story prompted me to ponder what I would do if given a sum of money unexpectedly and told that I had free reign to spend it as I saw fit. I’ve imagined winning a large lottery before, so my fantasies along this line are well practiced.

In the winning lottery ticket scenario, my first act after collecting my millions would be to set up a charitable foundation named for Judy and me. I have come to realize the expression of ego such an action would represent because, of course, I would want to be involved in directing donations. Only those causes I thought worthy of our support would receive grants.

There would be less ego evident to others if I made direct contributions anonymously. But, still, there is hubris involved in thinking that we could make a situation right if only we could bestow our money on the needful causes.

My mythical millions have built a gym and a theater at the school I co-founded. I would endow scholarships. And, of course, I would reserve enough so that we would not ever again worry about meeting our personal budget.

My chances of winning a lottery and setting up the foundation are smaller than my chances of being hit by lightning. And I do not attend a church with a congregation in Chicago that has come into unexpected riches.

But, I have become a person of a certain age with some amount of talents, figurative and literal, allowed to me. It will be for others to judge whether or not I have lived up to the expectations of the master in the Parable. I don’t think that any of us would aspire to be the third servant, the one who buried his talent. As that story concludes, he loses even that while the others get to keep both the gift and the earnings.

I wonder if there is a trap in retirement that lures people into burying their talents rather than finding ways to use them beyond a paying job?

The questions remain: if a gift like that enjoyed by the church members came my way, what would constitute burying it? And what would be akin to investing wisely?

The church still has $1.4 million about which it will decide. One novel idea that has emerged is to set up a credit union for use by people in the community who don’t usually have access to reasonably priced credit. The church’s story is unfolding.

So is your story and mine. Here and now. We have our array of talents. Have done for many years.

Good luck!

Daniel E. White

July 22, 2015

The first Wednesday in November, 1960, several other members of the CYF (Christian Youth Fellowship) and I came to our weekly afternoon meeting sporting hand-printed tags on our chests reading “Impeach Kennedy.”

Obviously, Constitutional subtleties eluded us as teenagers; you can’t impeach someone until he or she is in office. But, as non-Catholics, we were parroting the conviction of many of our parents that America was about to be ruled by a Pope.

As I recall, all of us present that day mourned with everyone else in November 1963 when our youthful President was assassinated. Somewhere in those three years, we had all changed our minds.

I was reminded about this when reading the newspaper recently. A presidential candidate, speaking about President Obama’s “change of heart” between 2008 and the present regarding gay marriage, bloviated, “well, he was either lying then or he’s lying now.” That’s the first time I have seen a change of mind called lying.

One of the few times I have been moved to write a letter to the editor of a newspaper was when that paper criticized the Governor of the state for changing his mind on some key issue. Heaven help us if we elect people who do not have the capacity to change their minds.

If a candidate for office changes her mind to appeal for my vote that would be called pandering. But, if once in office, she helps to enact what I wanted to happen, don’t I win? Does her motive for changing her mind negate my winning?

Much has been written about the speed at which public opinion has changed in America about gay marriage. The rapidity is unprecedented but a change in the dominant opinion of people in the country has happened many times.

Remember laws against interracial marriage? Shock at the idea of women in combat? Thinking that sending Japanese neighbors to relocation camps was okay? Seeing “Red China” as the epitome of evil? (I thought about that standing on the Great Wall one Thanksgiving Day.)

Make this more personal. When have you changed your mind? I’m betting that most, if not all of you, would have no trouble changing your mind if evidence you believed to be trustworthy surfaced that countered your previous way of thinking.

How many of us see things through not just a lens, the magnification of which might change over time, but through a prism that plays with light and can sober our judgment that we are seeing things as they really are?

How many of us, People of a Certain Age, look at the same thing differently with the passage of time because experience intervenes? Re-read a book you really liked thirty years ago and see if you don’t take away new understanding.

In the data about Americans’ acceptance of gay marriage is the fact that millenials are far more accepting than their elders. Might that be because they have grown up in a different world than we did?

I am aware of the danger posed by those who use serial changes of mind to control others. A classic tool of authoritarian autocrats is to crack down on something today that they allowed to happen yesterday, then permitting it again, keeping their subjects in a constant state of uncertainty about what is acceptable or not. I have known some parents and teachers who, though most probably not meaning to do so, sent so many mixed signals to kids about what was acceptable and what was not that the kids were damaged by the lack of consistency.

Like most aspects of life, we’re always seeking the right balance between consistency and flexibility, conviction and open-mindedness.

George Bernard Shaw wrote: “Progress is impossible without change, and those who cannot change their minds cannot change anything.”

When I was six, God was a man who wore a black robe and looked very much like the minister. By age sixty-six, I was okay with God being either or no gender and not much concerned about wardrobe. Point is, I believe in God. For me, that is a consistent conviction that I don’t anticipate changing my mind about.

Much else is subject to evidence, my place in life, my attitudes, my beliefs, and whatever other factors construct my prism.

As happened between 1960 and 1963 for those impassioned teenagers (a redundant phrase?) in San Diego, sometimes changing one’s mind changes one’s heart for the better, too. What’s wrong with that?

Daniel E. White

July 7, 2015

Our 50^th high school reunion was a source of happiness and discovery for Judy and me. High school sweethearts, we spent much time with each other, not cultivating a particularly broad array of friendships among classmates. The reunion happily connected us with people with whom the teenage connections had been, at best, tenuous. And we all seemed to feel that happiness. Why?

Science and social science might be developing answers. Did you know about the field of “happiness economics?” Have you ever heard of the U-curve? Those were news to me.

Writer Jonathan Rauch introduced me to the U-curve in an article in The Atlantic. It seems that human beings, across ethnic, cultural, even economic backgrounds (and some great apes, too!) have sketched a common pattern of behavior with respect to life satisfaction that seems beyond coincidence. Put simply, folks in their 20s and 30s tend to be high on life. Beginning in their 40s and extending, perhaps, as far as the early 50s, “is that all there is,” (to quote a favorite line from a favorite song) creeps into the psyche.

Then, without any particular causation, life begins again to be satisfying. One psychologist, Laura Carstensen, quoted by Rauch in his article, “found that ‘the peak of emotional life may not occur until well into the seventh decade.’” That about hit the Class of 1964, San Diego High School, head on in October 2014. All those peaking emotional lives gathered in one place at one time. The room must have oozed life satisfaction.

We were all in the upswing of the U-curve.

Rauch describes interesting research into why the curve exists. There are explanations involving the “expectations gap,” (you knew a gap had to be involved somehow!) which relates the realization of a shorter time left in life to more realistic goals. The growth and some practical definition of wisdom is also an up and coming area of study. Rauch likes the line of thinking that emphasizes the increased realization that relationships matter more than things.

I do, too. And there is a satisfying pun from the world of texting to note here as well about the U-curve. As I get older, U matter more to me. I also like the U-curve more than the Bell Curve because there don’t seem to be any people less able to enjoy benefits.

Nothing about the U-curve or happiness economics gets in the way of People of a Certain Age still striving to invent, create, make a difference. As Rauch points out, evolutionarily speaking, having us older folks around has proved useful to younger people who tend to be quick to act, less able to control their emotions, full of energy and the ones who, at their best, drive change and progress. We provide the ballast of experience, the time to reflect, that steady the ships sailed by our juniors.

I do not feel the need to “make my mark” in the same way I did when I was younger, and I am not alone. If I make more “marks” before I leave this earth, bully for me. What matters more is the experience of life at a pace that permits savoring moments, especially those spent with others.

Perhaps there is something else at work here, too. Barry Manilow sang the lyric “I made it through the rain.” The song celebrates others who made it through the rain, too, suggesting a basic camaraderie among those who have spent a similar amount of time on the planet and are still standing, figuratively, if not literally.

At some level, didn’t we all grow up respecting our elders, valuing our grandparents, celebrating our kupuna by whatever name we called them? Why did we do that?

Maybe we who have reached the age of elder or grandparent or kupuna feel humble pride that we have gotten this far. Our roads to this place and time are many and variously dotted with triumphs and disasters. But we have made it. We’re proud we have done. We’re humble because to have gotten here was neither a foregone conclusion nor a feat we accomplished alone.

There are still people in the curve of the U. If the research is right, there will always be those.

For those of us on the right hand side of the U, now that science and economics are confirming that our upsurge in life satisfaction is normal, let’s enjoy the happiness we feel. It’s in our nature.

June 23, 2015

The speaker was only 15 years older than the graduates she addressed, so they listened attentively. In a quiet yet forceful voice, she described being scared to knock on the door of the first house she would visit as a 20 year-old candidate for state office. What was she thinking? She is now a Congresswoman, a war veteran, poised, proud and humble, a rising star nationally in her party. She was once scared?

The kids and the rest of us were hooked by her story.

Days later, another graduation speaker. She told us she was not going to make a speech but would just speak to us. She unveiled her story: abused as a child, she found safe haven and confidence at the school whose graduates she now addressed. Incredibly, sexual violence visited her again in college. She was devastated. She is now an accomplished, articulate, effective veteran national leader in the movements to end domestic violence and other forms of abuse.

More drama in this story. Odds that seem daunting yet morphing into a story of triumph. Her “just speaking” was a powerful speech.

A professor of Mom’s once assured her class that every person’s life provided a story worth knowing. All that was needed was the telling or the writing. No need to be a member of Congress or national CEO to have a story worth knowing. Every person, he said.

I don’t know every person. But every person I’ve ever taken the time to query and listen to has, in fact, had a story containing something worth knowing, even if the story described the everyday, the routine, the quotidian (can’t resist that word!).

At one of Dad’s churches, there was a man named Tom Hatfield. On Sunday, Tom was one of the crowd, a 70+ year-old guy in a rumpled tan suit who didn’t socialize much on account of his being shy. Every Saturday, Tom Hatfield mowed the lawn around the church. So, every Sunday, the church looked cared for.

I never knew what Tom had done for a living or what family he might have had. I was just a teenager. But I learned from Tom Hatfield the value of “the little unremembered acts of kindness and of love” Wordsworth described, and Dad preached about to a congregation that might not have thought much about how the grass got mowed every week. Tom had a story; he was the story.

The best history teachers tell stories. No surprise there. Not every story makes the history books. But every story can still teach, and engage in a way dates and date do not.

Once, sitting on a bench at a retirement community waiting for a friend, I engaged a resident who informed me that he was the creator of the Pink Panther. I pumped him for more information, and he educated me about life in Hollywood. Maybe he was the creator and I had lucked out in engaging him in conversation. Or maybe he was not, and he was choosing to live a fantasy into which he had invited me for a moment. Either way, I learned something.

Have you had a crossroads moment where you made a choice that has shaped your life since? What drama has there been in your love life, your professional career, your child-rearing, your military service, and so on? What lessons lie in your story?

Our stories—yours and mine—are unique but connect to the larger human experience. That wonderful paradox: we are individuals part of a whole with a past, present and future. Through our stories, we contribute some bit of understanding to the education of the young and those not so young whose education never ends. If we tell them.

When Tom Hatfield died, the church lawn did not get mowed as much.

The CEO found her way back from anger, guilt and despair by volunteering to help others at a critical time in the life of her city.

The Congresswoman remembered a challenge from her parents: if you see something amiss, what are YOU going to do about it. She rang the doorbell, convinced that her desire to engage in public service was not about her but about the service she wanted to provide to others.

What is your story? To whom have you told it? If not yet, when?

Among the many gifts enjoyed by older people is the number of chances for the familiar to be made fresh.

The Bible reader was an older woman, only slightly taller than the lectern she stood behind. The reading was a story I have heard many times before. Two men on the road from Jerusalem to Emmaus, on the third day following the crucifixion of Jesus of Nazareth, were joined on the road by a fellow they didn’t recognize.

This third man inquired about their sadness and then launched into reciting various passages from Hebrew scripture pertaining to the coming of the Messiah. The men were enthralled. Upon reaching Emmaus, the two travelers invited the stranger to have dinner with them. In the course of the meal, they came to believe that they had been journeying with Jesus, miraculously risen from the dead. After their encounter, the two, one of whom remains unnamed, go back to Jerusalem to tell the other believers what they had seen.

The reader spoke slowly, with expression, conveying the melancholy of the two men when we first encounter them. Then we share their curiosity about their travel companion and their urgency at not wanting to part with him at Emmaus. When they see Jesus, we hear their excitement, and as they share their news with the others, their joy is unmistakable in our reader’s voice.

Whether the story is true is a matter of faith and belief.

What was true was that this diminutive woman with her soft voice read the story in a manner that left us feeling like were we hearing it for the first time, and from a witness.

We are nearly through another season of graduations. Counting my own, I imagine that I have attended more than fifty such ceremonies, not unusual for someone in my line of work. At most of the commencements, the students march to the sounds of Edward Elgar’s “Pomp and Circumstance.”

I can conjure up the tune in my head at will. Any of you who have been around schools can probably do the same. The notes have not changed since Elgar wrote them. Yet every time I hear them played well and clearly, I am moved. Perhaps the reason is that another cohort of students is being honored for their work. In that way, every commencement is a new event.

There is something deeper, too. The majesty of the music makes me stand a little straighter. The students, though a different group than last time or the time before, are connected to every other group so honored in a formal recognition of significant achievement. I feel in the presence of something noble, timeless, worthwhile.

The music is familiar. So is the feeling of freshness.

Some years ago, Judy and I were in Dodger Stadium for The Three Tenors concert. The second encore was “Nessun Dorma,” a familiar piece to people who listen to classical music. When the trio hit the final “Vincere,” that amazingly high climax that then slides into orchestral grandeur, 55,000 people were lifted out of their seats as though a giant magnet were making staying seated impossible.

Not long after that, Judy and I were at a Willie K Christmas Concert. Willie sang old favorites and some less well-known pieces that drew spirited applause from the audience. The last song was “O Holy Night.” We have sung that song countless Christmases and heard many great artists perform it beautifully.

This time, Willie seemed possessed by the lyrics and music, transported to another realm. The crystalline nature of his tenor voice built toward the climactic “oh, night divine” line that requires the artist to reach a very high note, the highest of the song. As Willie hit the note, the sell-out crowd rose to their feet. The Dodger Stadium magnet was at work again. No one could remain seated in the presence of such purity.

In my experience, the familiar becoming fresh more often than not does so in the context of performance. The reader, the actor, the singer, the musician, the photographer, the artist; these are often the vehicles for us to see again for the first time.

Young people can have similar experiences. Somehow, though, the more familiar something is, the greater the impact of startling freshness. And People of a Certain Age have more accumulated encounters with the familiar because they’ve been around a while longer. So, perhaps, we feel the gift of freshness more intensely.

If the teaching of the arts in schools and the support of the arts by communities ever needs a testimonial, I’m there. Who can say where we will find the next Willie K or Luciano Pavarotti or my treasured reader of old stories in a new way? Our lives would be a little less rich if we did not enjoy the moments when the familiar is made fresh for us.

May 27, 2015

Daniel E. White

 

Many people my age and older are keys to a win-win proposition. We have the time to give to groups gathering around common interests that might be uncommon, and those groups are sustained by us, in terms of participation and membership. We are “sub-group sustainers.”

Did you know that the Sarcocaulon Pattersonii, a native plant of South Africa with an inch-and-one-half trunk, prickly spines, and tiny leaves is in the geranium family? Neither did I. But the regulars at any meeting of the Inland Empire Cactus and Succulent Society do. Sculpting the Sarcocaulon Pattersonii into creative bonsai shapes adds to the wonder of particular specimens, making some worth lots of money. And a lot of those folks are in my age cohort.

Did you know that the four parts in a barbershop quartet are bass, baritone, tenor and…lead? I learned that at a rehearsal of the Sandblasters, a barbershop chorus in Palm Springs, California. Most of the singers remember the Truman Administration.

How many Rotary Clubs and similar service organizations have a median membership age around 60?

Bowling Alone, the title of a book by Robert Putnam that was popular a few years back, asserts that participation in political meetings, civic associations and other forms of community-building organizations that add to “social capital” are in decline. He wrote his book before flash mobs and social-media-organized demonstrations. Putnam’s thesis did not go unchallenged even then. The liveliness of the Cactus and Succulent Society and the Sandblasters would refute his thesis, too.

We pledge “one nation, under God, indivisible” but we willingly divide ourselves into myriad groups that focus on countless interests. Thanks heavens for such divisions! They are a strength in our society.

Several years ago, I attended the Annual General Meeting of the Jane Austen Society at Chawton, England, surrounded by those who could recite whole passages of Northanger Abbey and a few who seemed old enough to have known the author personally. One greeted me, “I say. You’re American, aren’t you? I’m Tony Trollope.” (A grandson namesake, I learned, well past his eightieth birthday but Anthony Trollope, for Pete’s sake!)

I’m lucky. I enjoy allowing myself to absorb the mini-culture of sub-groups. Each speaks its own jargon. There are distinct markers of accomplishment (e.g. the gent observing “this is the 12^th AGM I have attended”) that the membership understands. Often, the sub-groups find different ways to be exposed to the wider world. The joy of success, however defined, is common.

The enthusiasm for the cause is contagious. At the end of the Cactus and Succulent Society meeting, I was ready to sign up for a trip to Madagascar to see, in person, the giant euphorbia, some amazing and spectacular in size and shape and all amazing for how they survive in barren terrain, that had been the subject of the speaker’s power point presentation.

After the Sandblaster’s annual concert, “Coney Island Babe” was the worm of a song in my brain.

People of a Certain Age carry an important responsibility at this stage of life. Younger people often suffer the fatigue of fractionation. Hard work does not tire one nearly as much as the challenge of doing so many things that the opportunity to give any one task the time it needs is impaired. Social media and other technology only complicate matters. I applaud those who are not retired yet taking on leadership roles and active participation in societies like the ones I visited.

Before I retired, I met many in this privileged status who spoke of being so busy now that they did not know how they had managed to hold a full-time job. I can relate. My list of engagements might be unique to me but the time demands are the same. My age peers are in interest groups, active in church or service clubs, on somebody’s board, a volunteer at a non-profit, ushering at community art events. Some managed to work in golf and other hobbies. I’m still working on that one.

These people define active retirement. The main difference is that they—we—are engaged in activities they want to pursue, not ones they have to for economic reasons.

Our responsibility is to go, do, mentor, join, attend; in short, those who have the time can take the time to fill in the memberships that sustain the subgroups that are the backbone of our social order and pass along whatever wisdom we might have acquired along the way. There is no age restriction to this privilege.

Daniel E. White

May 12, 2015