Old-New Thinking

I am watching an episode of The Bridge, the Danish-Swedish co-production version, and one of the characters, a young, cool and ‘entertaining’ columnist, is talking with an older, much less cool, ‘married with kids’ reporter. The older man has mentioned that he borrowed his daughter’s CD of a band the young guy was referencing the previous week, listened to it and liked it. The cool guy sneers. The older guy says ‘you liked them last week’ and the cool guy spits out, ‘and now you like them’. I immediately think of a screed I have just read from an anonymous CBC producer objecting to a recent management appointment who, by-the-by, writes about ‘the younger and more creative producers’ and I find myself living both sides of that teenage dilemma we all had with our parents, with both sides thinking that the other knew nothing, and that we knew everything. My whole life I have watched and been part of this divide between energy and experience, fresh perspectives and a deep appreciation of the enduring, the surprise of excitement and the serenity of the given. It is only know that I have come to understand that perhaps there is no real conflict and that in fact we are all players in a more troublesome game.

We, the media, marketers and planners, have institutionalized the idea that youth, the new, and the current are the conditions that truly matter. It is partly a pushback against the remarkable hold that Baby Boomers are said to have on the economy, society, culture and politics. At the same time, it is a really complicated set of assumptions that hurt the young, hurt the aging and devastate the aged. On the one hand, we praise the innocent and inexperienced, ‘out of the mouths of babes,’ while extolling the experience and perspective of the elder, ‘commissions of wise people’. When I was a teen, we didn’t trust anyone over thirty and today we are heading to a moment when even thirty seems past some imaginary ‘best before date’.

You can see the consequences everywhere. In workplaces, there is a generational war for resources, attention, benefits and power. It is a battle that has little to do with quality of work or the larger needs of either the organization or society. It is about which subgroup gets to play with the most expensive toys the longest. You see it all around you in sullen youth, bored adults, crass cynicism and a host of debilitating ‘addictions’ ranging from deadly drugs to soul destroying and mindless forms of entertainment. Way too many of us feel that we are being denied the opportunity to be truly useful, vital and valuable either because we are too young or too old. I know brilliant energetic and deeply creative 80 year olds and dissolute, apathetic and unimaginative 25 year olds and of course the reverse.

The reality is that at the heart of all this destructive ageism is a set of assumptions that have little basis in reality and are largely fueled and maintained by a culture and an economy that desperately needs, demands even, a never-ending series of changes. The culture we inhabit of never-ending consumption and constant early obsolescence thrives on anxiety, psychological dependencies, artificial and real competition as well as true inequalities and misguided anti-human first principles. The wonder isn’t that we experience ‘generational conflict’ it is that the generational conflict doesn’t break out into true terrible violence.   

I have no magic bullet for resolving this conundrum. I am simply committing myself to taking note that living long doesn’t automatically bestow wisdom, being young isn’t a guarantee of vitality and innovation and having automatic assumptions about someone based simply on their age is a prejudice as devastating as any other. P

Old and Mean

I remember, when I was about nine, being sent to a Girl Guide camp for a week. I lived on a farm and we didn't usually get to travel in the summer months when the fruit needed to be picked. So going to camp was a big deal. When I got to the field that was our campground, I was assigned to a tent with four older girls from St. Catharines. They were savvy city girls; I was a skinny little thing with fine hair that I twirled, ending up with un-combable knots. Each tent required a leader and the St. Catharines girls unanimously picked me. They did it so enthusiastically, without knowing a thing about me, that I doubted it was an honour. I said I was skinny, not stupid.

It soon became obvious that what they meant by leader was the person who did everything. One night it poured and the wind pulled a peg up at one corner of the tent, driving the rain in on our sleeping beds. "You're the leader," they all said. "You have to go out and fix it." And I did because I had no idea how to stand up to them.

I couldn't wait for that week to end.

I grew up awkward socially. I never made friends easily. Not in public school. Certainly not in high school in the small town where I was the principal's daughter. It got easier at university and in workplaces where I met like-minded people. But the expression, third wheel, still gets me in the gut.

Sometimes when I admit to my social discomfort, others seem surprised and I take that as a good sign that I've moved on. I have accomplished things; I have created a fine life. But secretly,I know that I`ll always be the one you'll find hovering around the cheese table so I don't have to stand in the middle of a cocktail party trying to figure out how to join a conversation. Part of me will always be that skinny, awkward girl.

Luckily, what has saved me is my own comfort with my own company and with those I hold most dear. And I`m quite fine with that. I`m ready to enjoy the activities I love with the people I care about in my third phase.

But the old gut fear of being the outsider, of not knowing how to stand up to bullies came back to me this week when I read the New York Times story about mean girls in retirement homes. What if at the end of my life, old and vulnerable,with none of those cushioning loved one around me I have to deal with being ostracized by the cool old ladies.

I searched the web, hopeful this was a one-off, that the granny in the New York Times story had just been unlucky in her chose of retirement home. But the words `mean girls`and `cliques`came up all too often. ``It`s like junior high, with that cliquishness, that excluding,`` one article said. And in its own unique way, Gawker reported on ``cliques of old bitches terrorizing old folks homes nationwide.``

The coping strategies sound familiar: don`t look a bully in the eye, try to ignore mean comments, don`t provoke a bully, try to understand a bully`s behaviour. They also sound like things I can no longer be bothered with in life. I have spent a lot of my time to this point conquering fears. And each time I face something I didn`t think I could do and then do it, I realize how paralyzing fear is and take on another challenge. Loneliness is still something I do fear. But being "on the outside:" not so much anymore. And I have never feared solitude.

So, I'm not going to waste my time worrying about the old folks`home and let that ruin the next thirty years. (She says, optimistically.). Beside, I've developed a pretty mean glare of my own. And damn it, when the mean old bitches come after me, I`ll be ready for them with a sharpened cane. D

Shaping My Story

I was sitting down for coffee in the small cafe inside the local recreation centre when a guy approached and asked if he could sit in one of the other easy chairs scattered around the table. I nodded and he pointed at my cane and said 'I got a brace and the guy coming in the door now is worse off than either of us; he has an artificial leg.' The guy with the metal leg heard him, laughed and sat down at the table with us. I had no idea who either one of them was; they were old friends and the three of us settled quickly into a pattern of conversation that was both superficial and deeply revealing. We each were letting the other two know what we believed mattered most about our own personal story. We were, through emphasis and selective life editing, creating our personae anew.

In the New York Times this week there was an intriguing examination of what is called 'expressive writing'. 

               "The scientific research on the benefits of so-called expressive writing is surprisingly vast. Studies have shown that writing about oneself and personal experiences can improve mood disorders, help reduce symptoms among cancer patients, improve a person’s health after a heart attack, reduce doctor visits and even boost memory.

                  Now researchers are studying whether the power of writing — and then rewriting — your personal story can lead to behavioural changes and improve happiness."

We all do it; that's what the three of us were doing over coffee, orally mind you and the evidence collected so far is about the written word and the written word has a power that we will explore deeply in this blog. But when I read the article, after accidentally encountering the two guys at the cafe I found myself returning again and again to the idea of 'writing and rewriting' my personal story. It is something I have been preoccupied with these past couple of years and I can testify to the fact that it does change you, it does challenge you, it does reshape how you see yourself and your world. 

That's what integrating one's life experiences is possibly all about, a re-telling, or re-understanding perhaps of what the arc and narrative of life so far has been and what the arc and narrative not yet written might be. I learned a great deal about those two strangers in just a half hour through listening to the condensed version of their lives so far. I suspect they learned much about me, not the whole me by any stretch but perhaps hints of the me that I am now trying to put forward front and centre. How that image might morph over the years is not clear to me at all but writing it and re-writing it is going to be fascinating.

Human beings are story tellers, it maybe the thing that made us significantly different from the ape, though that might just be the story we tell and are sticking to. P.

Conditionals

The third phase of life is part new discovery without the demands of full-time parenting and full-time work but also part review. If  can be a major word in sentences about the past. If I had been braver... If I had been smarter... But the ifs can also be filled with a sense of wonder at the happenstance and luck of life. Here's an example: I almost died once – well, once that I know of, for sure. I’m talking about one moment when  an accidental decision spared me and the if still leaves me with a shiver of relief.

We were in India. On the sacred Ganges River. In the city of Varanasi. A city so ancient feeling that, despite the fact it has been rebuilt again and again, Mark Twain once called it, “older than history, older than tradition, older even than legend.” We had wandered through the narrow alleys of the old city, trying to find our way to the river for hours even though countless people gesticulated in its direction and said it was just down there. Finally, we stood with the river below us and the ghats, the steps for the holy and the hopeful, spreading out in each direction. Before we could even take in our success at reaching the river or appreciate the legend before us we were surrounded by touts who buzzed around us wanting to guide us, wanting to sell us something, wanting money. We knew we had to keep moving but which way?  We both agreed to turn left for no apparent reason and, before we had gone fifty metres, I felt an intense heat on my back through my Indian shawl, felt my lower back pushed forward. Then and only then, like a physics lesson made virtual, I heard the sound of an explosion. If we had gone the other way, we would have walked right into the blast and become one of the mangled or the dead carried out by bicycle rickshaws, the only vehicles that could make it to ghats and through the alleys.

If we had gone the other way, we might have been in pieces.  In grammar: the third conditional, meaning we didn’t and we weren’t. Unreal conditional. It didn’t happen.

I thought a lot about conditionals over the past summer and fall as I reviewed my life so far while downsizing one house, settling into another, as I witnessed so much of the world in war and chaos, as I tried to explain the peculiarities of grammar to advanced English learners over the summer at a college near Toronto.  If, I told my students, is such word of longing, of possibility in the English language. Sentences that start with “if” express not only real conditions but wishes and regrets.  To let them feel the emotion of the third conditional, I showed them a scene from the movie, Benjamin Button, a scene a clever English teacher posted on YouTube for just that purpose. In the scene, Benjamin describes all the actions of strangers that led to the moment his girlfriend, Daisy, the dancer, is struck by a car and her leg is crushed. If only one thing had happened differently she would have been spared. His voice trembles with sorrow as he recounts the moments before her accident. If only. If only. If only.

It’s what too many people were saying this summer and fall. Families in Gaza, grandmothers in Israel. If  we had made peace my children and grandchildren would be alive.  Children in refugee camps outside of Syria. If only this war would end, then I would be celebrating my birthday at home. Families watching their loved ones die in Sierra Leone. If only the world cared.

This past summer was one when the conditional fragility of life was evident everywhere. But the personal stories from Malaysia Airlines Flight 17, which was shot down over the Ukraine, struck me hardest.  And the story of one Miguel Panduwinata tore at my heart. Miguel was a 11-year-old boy, the Associated Press News Agency reported, a boy who usually travelled happily from the Netherlands to Bali where he visited his grandmother and relished jetskiing and surfing. But this time it was different. The day before Miguel had questions about death and what would happen to his soul when he died. That night he refused to let go of his mother and, before boarding the plane the next day asked her, “what will happen if the airplane crashes?” A real conditional that came true.  After the news of MH17’s savage end, his mother lashed herself for not paying attention to her son’s premonitions. I should have listened. I should have listened. And I imagine that for the rest of her life she will say to herself: If only I had listened, Miguel would still be alive.  He would still be in one piece.

My own regrets, my own what-ifs,pale in comparison. As I threw out old photos and furnishings before moving, I was nonetheless filled with conditionals. If I had stayed in that job, what would have happened? If I had been a better person, would my first marriage have lasted? If we had waited would we have sold our house at a better price? If I could have done things differently, what would they have been?

What surprised me is that as the conditionals piled up fewer and fewer of them seemed connected to regret. Rather, they seemed more and more to be filled with a light happiness and with gratitude.  If my marriage had not ended, I would not have met the wonderful man I share my life with. If I had not married my first husband, I would not have my beautiful daughter.  If I had not quit my job, I would have missed out on new adventures.

As I hurriedly packed memories away in boxes in the summer, I took down the post card of the ghats of Varanasi that had hung by our side door for nearly a decade. It had constantly reminded me as I left the house each morning that I have been a lucky person. Perhaps it was just the exhaustion of emptying a house and the emotion of moving on but I came to a new appreciation of the conditional then. Gratitude. Unconditional gratitude. D.

Stages

We live our lives in stages. We compartmentalize our lives. We look long and hard for a narrative that connects the bits and pieces, the hard stones, the brilliant gems, the glass shards that cut and the soft cushions that comfort. Our lives are both fictions and true tales, constructed and lived. Beneath these platitudes, bromides and hard-won perspectives is the over-arching reality that for the most part our lives have distinct phases. We are nurtured as children; we create careers and families as adults; and we then come to a spot where we make sense of it all, gain perspective and push on. What is sometimes known as the third phase.

Making sense of it all has become key to us. We love what we have done, what we are doing and we seek to try and understand how best to understand where we have been and where we are going. We experiment with silence, quiet, right living, exercise, joy, fun, new experiences, tried and true loves. There is no clear road map just a series of signposts and trail markers. We hope to report on what worked for us and what didn't. This isn't so much an instruction manual as it is an honest memoir with tips, hints and the odd recipe.