Conversations

Some people complain that Twitter and texting are making the country inarticulate. Here is a verbal exchange between two neighbors that I overheard this morning:

      "Morning."
       
       "Weather."

       "Nice!"

After Reading Heilbrun

I just finished reading “The Last Gift of Time: Life beyond Sixty” by Carolyn G. Heilbrun. Here are quotes from that work:

I was shocked, almost from the moment I left Columbia, by how little I missed it, how relieved I was not to have to plunge, ever again, into that poisonous atmosphere.

I entered into a period of freedom, and only past sixty learned in what freedom consists: to live without a constant, unnoticed stream of anger and resentment, without the daily contemplation of power always in the hands of the least worthy, the least imaginative, the least generous.

[To find meaning in later life,] ...the undertaking ... requires strong effort and the evidence of growing proficiency.

The only cure for sadness, [T. H.] White said, was to learn something.

...one sometimes feels compelled ... to complain ... but does not do so because all the people one sees are sick of it and will visit even less often if complaints or criticisms are forced upon them....

[May Sarton wrote] “We have to make myths of our lives,” she wrote. “It is the only way to live without despair. ...It is only past the meridian of fifty that one can believe that the universal sentence of death applies to oneself.”

Whatever the satisfying and as yet culturally endorsed adventure after sixty may be, its necessary element is the sense of something essential and vital having been achieved or discovered or learned. [Heilbrun argues that romance and sex are the only culturally sanctioned adventures for women, and that’s awkward after 60.]

The secret, however, of successful--and therefore continuing--association with the young lies in knowing that they are more valuable as suppliers of intelligence than receivers of it.

...leave the future to those who will inhabit it.

Here are some thoughts I had after reading her book:

By 60 or 70 we have developed a personal wisdom -- the sum of our experiences, knowledge, and unique view of the world -- and the frustrating issue is that we cannot use it to help our adult children, who want to learn their own lessons and develop their own wisdom. Our value to them is to be present, to observe, to approve, to support, to listen, to appreciate, to love. (Oh, and maybe most important, to finance.)

I like to think another contribution we older folks can make to the lives of the young is to provide a possible model for how to deal with life, since we obviously cannot give them advice on how to do it. If we can make ourselves happy and if we can handle what life deals us, then maybe that can give the young some ideas of how to do that for themselves, when their time comes.

As Heilbrun noted, many old people ask “What’s the point?” and become despairing. Humans are meaning-making creatures, which explains the power of narrative, and our job is to create the point. Make something up!

The adventure I have found for myself after sixty is painting. It meets Heilbrun’s requirements for effort and evidence of increased proficiency. It banishes sadness, because I am always learning something. I can express my personal wisdom with it. It is fun! And it is culturally acceptable, though Heilbrun seemed to think there were no culturally sanctioned adventures for old women. I consider the freedom Heilbrun discussed, the freedom of not caring any more about what people think of me or about what is socially acceptable, to be another adventure for old women. Seize the day!