What is Our Aged Perspective?

When I was a youth we felt old people were traditionalist, conservative and “old fashion”. We felt they lived in the past and made up their ideas by outdated thinking that was not very relevant for us today.

Today, half a century later, I am there where we used to think of older people like that. How do we think about our “out datedness” when possibly some youth look at us the way we used to think of our elders? So much about the different perspective on things depends on our age and stage in life.

It is likely a frequent misunderstanding of how we older persons think and why we think as we do. We do not think only in the framework of another age of the past. We actually form our present ideas and values based on an accumulation of all our experiences including the present. We do not base our lives only on 15, 30, or 45 years’ experience. We may have 7 decades of experience on which to base on all ideas and of feelings about reality and life. We can draw on things we learned say, 50 years ago, as well as all we learned and experienced in the decades since. So certainly some things are based on “ancient” knowledge and ideas but they are modified and expanded by events and experiences since that give us a much larger perspective. So instead of taking a stance on a past, short perspective, we base positions on the longer experience in which we have accumulated a lot as we participate in life with the next generations. Constantly we evaluate the present by this long-range perspective. Thus we are not impressed by “conventional wisdom”. This is very true when we think politics, economics, and God’s will for our lives as well as about everything else. It means that we make judgments and opinions based not only on current and popular thought, but also on all of our past as it informs the present.

It can be said that aged people may have a special mentality which only they can really appreciate. It is an interesting experience and matter for us to blend the past into the present. We do this in various ways as a hobby and style of communication. Personally as a couple, we constantly resurrect verbal expressions and music from our distant past and apply them to present situations. Used in German, these often archaic expressions are an interesting form of humor that constantly spring up in our casual conversation. Often we don’t use the contemporary idiom or denotative speech, but we use old particular expressions in new and ways unrelated to their original setting. My father-in-law used to say about our deacon that when he was young his mother said about him, “Davie is so stubborn-headed”, but stubborn headed hardly has the flavor of the German word, and is still funny to us. Another source of bringing ideas from the past is recalling words from songs that we learned years ago and using them to express our feelings of the present. When I am little depressed, I may moan, “O lonesome me”, from Elvis Presley, of almost 50 years ago. In fact in the past few weeks, I have collected 25 such allusions and recorded them. So frequently we blend so much of our past into the present to give a deep or light-hearted approach to present situations, however we feel.

Sometimes we joke about being in our “second childhood,” an expression that used to be used long ago for senile person becoming old and childish. But part of that early childhood is still with us and is romantic at times. For example, Loretta is still intrigued by doll furniture and clothes and nursery rhymes. Perhaps we are freer than earlier to express the unspoiled childishness that is still in us and perhaps reawakened in us. We are not living in the original, but the earlier is living in us and it blends into the present eon, enriching our daily lives. Perhaps having a little more time, being more relaxed, we are a little more creative and reflective to bring the most interesting of the past into our present experience. We are not living in the past, but the past is still with us to enrich our lives.

It seems to me now that many middle-aged and younger persons do not have as much fun with a sense of humor as we do in our private lives. They think too straight forward and often don’t smile at the ironies of life with a sense of humor. When our children were youth, I could hardly be funny to them however I tried. They were too serious and objective, or didn’t they think adults could or should be funny, just “da…” was the response I sometimes received.  At our age now, we don’t have to be serious all the time, not even most of the time. We can stand more at the sidelines and just smile or laugh at the strange things of life. We can see wonder, humor, irony, or incongruities where many persons tend to see only a current set of facts. We stand, watch, and critique life rather than being buried or challenged by it. Being more carefree, we are always ready to see the weird side of issues. After all, what are we suppose to worry about, although we could have plenty to be concerned about.

Frequently we see younger persons expressing their hopes, dreams, and uncertainties. Neither did we nor do they know what the future holds. We know what our life has been, where we achieved our dreams or didn’t. We know youth have options; we also know that life will have twists and opportunities, and attractions so that any young person’s goals may shift as life is lived out. They have many options, but can’t predict how it will all turn out. We look back; they look forward. We can see where we succeeded. where we might have made other choices. We cannot advise younger persons with any great wisdom but they may learn from our lives, although they are living with some different perspectives and opportunities. It seems every generation has to work through its own directions and issues. They can learn from accumulated knowledge of their elders, but they must integrate it into their life in a meaningful way just as their elders are still doing. Probably the greatest guiding light for all ages is, “What will I wish I had done when I look back 5 years from now, or 50 years from now? Projected hindsight, you may call it, to guide you now. From the back of my memory is the poetic line, “Grow old with me, the best is yet to me” which also comes up in a more recent song by John Lennon