One More Day Alive

The young, purposeful woman sitting next to me in the café busied herself crocheting a new carrying bag.

She couldn’t be more than 25 years old, an age at which one might expect her to more likely be reading about accessories in a hip fashion magazine than making them.

As she worked the intricate loops with her hook, I was transfixed.

“Where did you learn that?” I asked.

“From my grandmother when I was 5 years old,” she answered proudly. “It’s the kind of thing somebody else has to teach you — it’s hard to learn from a book.”

As I reflect on this beautiful art passed down through generations, I think of my parents, both in their 70s, in great shape physically and mentally thanks to thoughtful living and devotion to things and people that mattered. Nevertheless, they both still struggle with life’s problems, like health care, planning out the rest of their lives on limited incomes and a host of other age-related concerns.

I listen and try to understand. But like so many others in the world, there is a limit to my appreciation. I am focused on my own problems and my issues, even though I constantly try to understand theirs.

But when it comes to one issue — wisdom — we are more inexorably connected: they have it, and I want it.

I try to spend more time with them than I used to. I enjoy doing so, and I hope they do too. I know they have seen and lived so many experiences, things that still lie ahead of me.

Recently, prodded by my outspoken mother’s suggestion, I began to pay more attention to the plight of retirees, something I certainly never did when I was younger and obsessed with all things young.

Back then, I passed up amazing opportunities, looking right through some of the most incredible people I ever met when I was a teenager delivering prescriptions for my local drugstore to nursing homes and assisted living centers, where I ran into those with storied and accomplished pasts, like the former famous Ziegfeld Follies dancer who could only hold my attention for the minute or two I was there to make a delivery, or the World War II veteran, one of Ike’s aides, whom I hurried past on my way out of the store  so I could make it to an early movie with my girlfriend. Or my own grandparents whose courageous tales of coming to America and survival against the odds weren’t as interesting to me as my own struggles.

Now that I know better, I wonder why the rest of the world doesn’t. Rest assured things are a lot better in many ways now than for those who went before. Organizations like AARP have done wonders for transforming the image and the plight of seniors in America. They and others have brought great light to the worth and value of our elders.

There is a greater awareness that seniors contribute hundreds of billions of dollars to our society each year in unpaid services, whether volunteering at their local church or hospital or helping friends and family members.

And last year, President Bush signed into law the five-year reauthorization of the Older Americans Act. The new law expanded many of the programs and efforts aimed at recognizing and supporting older adults’ contributions to our community, while welcoming them to continue those contributions.

On the local front, organizations like our own Foundation for Senior Living and many senior centers keep our greatest Americans connected to each other, to opportunities to improve their situations and to the world in general.

Obviously, we need to do everything we can to help and protect those who paved the way for the rest of us from the pitfalls of financial and social hardship as rising prices of drugs, medical services and the cost of living outpace the means of many seniors.

But we also should realize a great opportunity to capitalize on something that has never existed before in the history of mankind — a booming population of human beings living longer than others have ever lived, who have evolved past the petty physical needs and selfish concerns of youth to know, feel and understand humanity and the world in a way that no young person ever can.

We all have a tremendous opportunity not just to help and respect our aging population but to learn from them to reach a new level of understanding and appreciation of the world around us and the souls within us.

Then maybe we can all weave this world and our time in it into a meaningful experience that truly makes sense in the next one.

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