Awakening

We were at Yom Kippur services, seated among 500 congregants, some dressed all in white, chanting responsively with the Rabbi: sometimes in Hebrew, sometimes in English.  There were a remarkable number of serene or smiling faces, particularly, it seemed, among the elderly.  And there must have been over 200 people 70 years or older.  The mood was so different, so much friendlier than the synagogue we had attended for over 40 years.

That former synagogue brought out all of my resistance, born of a lifetime’s attachment to secular humanism, to organized religion.  I had attended in order to be kind to the wife I love, but I had always been a stranger there.  I’m sure that every movement of my body, every crease in my face, signaled to others that I wasn’t at home, and as far as I could tell, that’s how they treated me.  Their greetings, like mine, were more grimaces than smiles, more perfunctory than genuine.  I felt like a stranger in a hostile territory, barely pretending to join in.

Without wanting to, I limited Franny’s ability to relax as deeply as she had wanted into the service and a community of Jewish families she wanted for her own.  Year after year, I felt irritated with my own fate, and angry at the way that I had diminished Franny’s experience, which was deep, satisfying, and uninhibited when I was absent.  I was ashamed of myself.

Though the liturgy in our new synagogue was essentially the same, it seemed joyful to me and that relaxed my muscles, mental and physical.  The chanting washed over me and I joined in.  My body, often edgy during services, quieted.  I stopped thinking and simply read the words of the prayers, lending my voice, however tentatively, to the haunting Yom Kippur melodies.  Instead of closing, praying—not the words but the sounds—opened my heart.

We were sitting in the middle of a long row.  There had been a choral group singing on the bima, which is the stage where the Rabbi, the Cantor and, most importantly the Torahs reside.  I had been enchanted with their song and, just as much by the age range of singers.  Of the 12, the youngest might have been 25 and the oldest 90.  When they were done, they came down from the bima and headed back to their individual seats.  As is the custom when one has read from the Torah or given a talk, congregants shook their hands, eyes gleaming, and saying with gusto: “yashar ko’ach!” (something like, “more power to you!”)

One man in particular caught my eye.  He was probably the oldest, about 90 or so, and walked slowly with the help of a cane.  As he shook people’s hands, he smiled, slowly, gently.  And I thought: He’s so dignified.

For reasons I don’t entirely understand, his dignity stunned me.  Much like the blast from the Rosh Hashanah shofar, the ram’s horn, that each year reminds us of the anguish, the yearnings, and the failures of the year, just past, and more importantly, awakens us to the possibilities of the new year.  I needed to understand what that old man’s dignity signaled to me.

Up to that moment, I don’t think I’d given up my desire to be the energizing core of whatever group I inhabited.  I would say to myself and sometimes to others that I had let go of my ambitions, my drive to succeed, to accomplish great things, or to be the center of attention.  I’ve done so because it’s clear that my time is past and it’s time for younger generations to claim that center stage.

And yet, in my mind, and in some of my activity, I don’t think I’ve permitted myself the full understanding and acceptance of this great developmental sweep.  I’ve not truly stepped back.

The old man at the synagogue had stepped back.  He seemed so profoundly at home in that gentle smile.  He seemed to enjoy what he could do and to appreciate the pleasure it afforded others.  His smile said to me, and to the other congregants: I’m pleased to still be here in this place, with these people…to participate, to be alive.

Observing him, I think I felt what he felt.  I understood, if only for a moment, that there is a next stage of life, outside the magic circle of youth and manhood-in-full-swing.  It is quieter, more accepting, filled with appreciation of others, and gratitude for what I have.

 

 

In the Nature of Things

As he awakens, the Old Man glances out of the large window by his bed, noting the autumn leaves, already red and yellow, beginning their descent.  Even within the house, the air is cool and bracing.  Leaving his warm blankets seems forbidding and inviting at the same time.  Mostly inviting.

He pads around—a scouting mission of sorts, checking all the windows to see if there are any deer or coyotes walking by.  The pond, just a few yards away, is already noisy with the Canada Geese.

This morning, like the last, the Old Man is amazed at his good fortune.  There’s a wife he still loves, children and grandchildren too, books to read, friends to see, students to teach.  The granola has been tasting particularly good these days.

As he sips his coffee and reads the newspaper, sitting as always next to his wife, the Old Man yearns for the moment to last.  They talk about last night’s lovely dinner with friends and the wonderful documentary about Country music that they watched upon returning home—a guilty pleasure to watch TV late and not worry about getting up “early enough” the next morning.

Through the quiet morning, the Old Man is aware that he doesn’t just feel good or grateful or all those feelings he’s supposed to feel in circumstances like this.  In fact, he can’t shake off the feeling of being disappointed with his life.  There’s no particular target for the disappointment.  Sometimes, when he reviews his life, he checks off one experience after another, noting how, overall, even the bad times worked out well enough and the good times were more than he deserved.  But that soft blanket of disappointment continues its embrace.

Still, he looks forward to a meeting planned for the late morning.  He’s going to see an old client in the Cambridge office he has retained for the last few years in spite of his retirement.  It has become a sanctuary, now undiminished by the exchange of money.    He loves the shelves and shelves of books, the hundred little artifacts, collected over a lifetime, the paintings and wall hangings.  They keep him company, demanding nothing in return.

As the Old Man settles into his easy chair to take in the wisdom of Yuval Noah Harari’s brilliant new book, Sapiens, the buzzer from the waiting room startles him, so engrossed had he become in his book.  The visitor is actually right on time and the Old Man buzzes him up.

The tall, stocky man, in shirt sleeves and suspenders, enters the Old Man’s study with an air of unease.  He is a gray, jangling presence.  Before he is fully seated, he begins to talk about all the things he’s doing and all the people he’s responsible for.  Yes, he has been successful in his business but since he turned 60, he has grown increasingly aware of an estrangement with his children.  He hadn’t had the time for them and he regrets it now.  The more he experiences the estrangement, the more obsessed he has become with their well being.  If he failed them in the past, what about the future?

He can see that they struggle with their finances.  Their marriages are just alright.  Their own children seem vulnerable in this terrible world beset by violence and massive climate-induced storms.  Is there something he can do to protect them?  He wants answers from the Old Man, who had once helped him to repair the fragile marriage of his middle years.  He talks and talks, his worries and pain crowding out the air of peaceful contemplation that, minutes before, had filled the room.

The Old Man is well aware that his visitor wants assurances, comfort, solutions to yet-to-arrive problems.  Miracles, really.  Guarantees of financial and marital security for his children and grandchildren, at least.  He listens intently, his face rapt and sober.  His visitor looks for clues: a knowing smile, a wise sense of comprehension and compassion.  There is none to be seen. The Old Man is quiet.  His face is impassive.  Unable to read or apparently influence the Old Man, the visitor finally stops.  The room is very still.

Eventually, after an uneasy silence, the Old man, begins, “Your grandfather died; your father died; you died; your son died; your grandson died.”

“What???”.  The visitor had come, asking for wisdom, and instead he is hearing nonsense at best, mockery or doom at worst. “What the hell does that mean?”,the visitor yelps, half screaming, half swallowing his words,.

The Old Man wonders if he should continue.  But he is comfortable enough with his visitor’s indignation and confusion, so he does.  He goes to his shelves, finds a treasured book of Zen stories, and reads the words of the Buddhist sage:  “No joke is intended,” says the sage who had responded to a wisdom-seeker, in his time)…”If before you yourself die your son should die, this would grieve you greatly.  If your grandson should pass away before your son, both of you would be broken-hearted.  If your family, generation after generation, passes away in the order I have named, it will be the natural course of life.  I call this real prosperity.”

The visitor is confused.  Something in him knows that the story points him in the right direction, even if he can’t grasp it at the moment.  He’s still irritated but no longer angry.  As he walks off, you can’t tell if light will dawn on him.

So too the Old Man and his disappointment.  Yet there’s a small smile on his face, and he feels his entire body relax as he glances out the window to watch the falling leaves.

 

 

 

My Little Friend

Did you ever have the feeling that an independent person lived within you?  Someone you once knew intimately, someone who has remained so vivid over all these years that you can’t even call him a memory.  To me, he is tangible.  I can almost touch him.

I see a small boy running with Freddy and Stevie along Grand Avenue in the Bronx.  His lungs are bursting as he picks up speed toward the end of the race, breaking at the last minute so he doesn’t run into Burnside Avenue.  There he is again, now at six, running across the lawn of our new Levittown home.  I see him at 10 and 15 and 20.  There’s a smile on his face.  He’s running with such joyful abandon.  I want to hold him to me.

Oh man.  Now he’s with a group of friends from the track team and they are leaping over cars that stop for a light in Harvard Square.  The drivers seem to be laughing with the jumpers.  I am, too.  I wish I could be jumping with them.

Once, when his father came to visit, the young man was running wind sprints with his friend, Chris O’Hiri, in the grand old Harvard Stadium.  While he ran, the track coach confided to his Dad:  “He runs beautifully, doesn’t he.”  If you looked closely, you’d see the father’s eyes tear up.  It was as though he were sprinting, too, his knees kicking high, then reaching and reaching until his feet touched the ground.  All the while, the autumn wind brushed his face like a the hand of new friend.  His father quickly wiped the tears away but the young man saw them, knew them, knew he was running for both of them.  Chris swung an arm around the boy-man.  He knew, too.

As you’ve surely guessed, the boy is me.  Until relatively recently, he has lived comfortably within me.  For a long time, I imagined that, at any moment, he could burst forth again.  I walk along and see a fence and imagine myself leaping over it with a foot or two to spare.  I walk across a street.  A car is coming fast.  No problem.  If necessary I’ll spring to the sidewalk.

Now I notice a clutch of big guys on my side of the street, not far ahead, looking slightly menacing.  I remember all the times as a boy I’d cross into dangerous territory, virtually daring the gang who ‘owned’ that part of town to come after me.  No chance.  I’d run away, leap over the stream that separated their part of town from mine, gain speed and make my way home without breaking a sweat.

To this day, I hate walking around without my sneakers, guarantors of my capacity to escape danger.  Even though now I couldn’t sprint more than a few yards before tearing a hamstring muscle or spraining an ankle.

For years, I substituted hiking in the high mountains for those youthful runs.  The walking was hard and slow, breathing labored, especially when we crested the passes at 11,000 feet.  But the exhilaration was so much like the boy’s.  The feeling of the air cooling the sweat on his face.  The gratitude when exhaustion came.

This older fellow was different than the boy, though.  He thought about the climbs and the peace that came from them.  But in the midst of these ruminations, he was momentarily transformed into that boy, who seemed just as sweet as the one he had known many years ago.  That boy remains a distinctive person, who I can almost touch, so different from a memory.

Sometimes I wonder if I should do something about them, those resident boys. Are they illusions that distract me from what’s going on right here, right now?  Should I expel them?  Should I push them into memory?  Deny myself their joyful companionship?

No, I don’t think so.  They don’t get in the way very much.  Their demands haven’t stopped me from becoming an adult.  They’re not so insistent on my attention that I miss more pertinent or immediate experiences in my life.  The truth is that I’m inclined to let them be and simply to take pleasure in their company.

 

 

 

Why Shouldn’t We Be President

In June of 2016, I left my job as CEO of the Institute for Nonprofit Leadership, handed the mantle to a much younger woman, and began my retirement.  I was 74.  The INP was on the verge of a major expansion – adding programs in New York and possibly Chicago among other cities –and although I found it all tremendously exciting, I didn’t want to lead that effort.  And I also didn’t see myself as the best person to do so.  .  Friends, family, and colleagues supported my decision as the right move at the right time.

With the debate over age and the presidency now raging, I find myself musing on the question of timing:  Why did I think it best to pass the torch?

The obvious answer was that I had grown old, that I wasn’t up to the task.  It was time for new ideas and new energy.  There’s some truth to the energy matter…less about ideas, since I still have lots of them. It seems to me, though, that it might be even more useful to turn our lens elsewhere: towards the differences between my successor, Yolanda Coentro, and me.  She’s a brilliant manager and leader, far more adept than I at building teams and operational systems, managing to strategy, and speaking to large audiences.  Even if I were 40, she’d be the right, and I the wrong, person to lead the INP at this phase of its development.

At the same time, I believe that, if I chose to, I’d still be entirely competent to begin new organizations, consult on strategic considerations with organizations ranging from startups to national corporations (which I have done in the past), or restart a psychotherapy practice.  In other words, the distinction between Yolanda and me might have more to do with temperament and skill than with age.

I’m getting irritated with people like Seth Moulton, who smugly talk about the need for new blood without saying what youth would add, what they would stand for, or what they can accomplish that old pros like Nancy Pelosi can’t.  Why wouldn’t a wise old head with lots of energy and experience fill the presidential leadership role as well or better than a young Turk?

The Nobel Prize winning scientist, Harold Varmus, quips that he doesn’t think  “anyone is competent to be president of the United States.”  There’s an impossible amount to learn.  Besides, if s/he’s over 70, there’s a 20% chance s/he’ll die in office.  That said, Varmus, who was born in 1939, served as the Director of the National Cancer Institute from 2010 to 2015.  You do the math.  “I’m still pretty good at learning new stuff,” he said.  As a matter of face, he believes that his judgment, writing ability, perspective, and temperament had all seemed to improve in his late 80’s.  So, yes, he figures that he could have responsibly taken on the presidency late in life.

You might say that Varmus is the exception, but that is precisely my point.  People vary so much, not just in their skills and temperament but also in how they age.  Years ago, Howard Gardner, wanting to break our society’s fixation on logical and verbal skills, insisted that there are many forms of intelligence, including musical, rhythmic, interpersonal, intrapersonal, and kinesthetic.  Daniel Goleman has documented the importance of “emotional intelligence,” and Angela Duckworth, among many others, tell us that “grit” is as important as any other quality in predicting the success or failure of children — and adults.

Research has also provided a more textured idea of our cognitive ability as it evolves through a lifetime.  Raymond Cattell, for instance, juxtaposes two kinds of intelligence—“fluid” and “crystallized.”  “Fluid intelligence” is the ability to reason and solve novel problems, independent of accumulated knowledge.  This is the stuff of logical problem solving, as well as scientific, mathematical, and technical problem solving.  It is the form of intelligence tested by I.Q. exams and generally peaks in the twenties.

Crystallized intelligence is acquired through experience and education.  Another cognitive psychologist, Richard Nisbett, concludes that:

“…when it comes to intelligence, experience can outrun biology… Older people make more use of higher-order reasoning schemes that emphasize the need for multiple perspectives, allow for compromise, and recognize the limits of knowledge.”  Despite a decline in “fluid intelligence,” complicated reasoning that relates to people, moral issues or political institutions improves with age.”

I would add that our nation — perhaps all nations — has a narrow (and erroneous) idea about what kind of mind and temperament are best suited to leadership.  Generally we envision assertive, decisive men, preferably 6’1” or taller, able to stand strong and alone even when buffeted by setbacks and criticism.  That ideal is closer to Ayn Rand’s amoral bully than we’d like to think.  But great leadership comes with the ability to bring together people and resources in the service of objectives.  It is the achievement of shared objectives that we’re after, isn’t it?  And that requires a very different set of skills than the popular model, which imagining charisma to be the end all, envisions.

What if we assess our leaders on their ability to select and depend on others with greater expertise in specific arenas? to bring out the best in individuals and teams — like the Cabinet, for instance, or the Foreign Service?  These skills require considerable social-emotional intelligence as well as some humility. There’s no guarantee that older politicians, who have lived years with life’s complexities, will necessarily demonstrate this style of leadership. But I might bet on them first.

I’m not suggesting that older people are necessarily better at leadership.  Clearly there are virtues in both youth and age — and each person, each candidate needs to be evaluated not as a general phenomenon but as an individual.  We might associate youth with vigor, daring, and originality but, for example, which of the Democratic candidates now seems the most vigorous, creative, and mentally alive?  Whether you like her or not, you’d have to say it’s Elizabeth Warren.

What’s more, we shouldn’t have to guess so much about our politicians’ ability.  What if we figure out some of the basic qualities required of presidential leadership, like social-emotional intelligence, and the ability to both understand and act in large, complex systems, then require candidates to be tested before running for office.  For that matter, why don’t we require annual physical and cognitive exams for those in high office?  That way we might not be saddled with the Woodrow Wilson’s and Ronald Reagan’s of the world, whose mental infirmities were kept secret, their unelected proxies running the show.

I would like to see a much more nuanced discussion about age and presidential fitness and ability.  Before leaping to conclusions, let’s ask what set of abilities and attributes suit the job and, only then, decide who meets our criteria.

 

From Discipline to Freedom

I’m a freedom loving guy.  I like free time.  I prefer ambling to planning on vacations.  Anyone who knows me, knows that I like to think freely and outside the box.  I’d rather begin an organization of my own than fit into anyone else’s.  I am lost when I try to read the directions for a new gadget.  I am uncomfortable with strict guidelines – in truth, with rules of any kind.

There’s no inherent virtue in this way of being.   In fact, it’s often problematic for me.  It gets me into lots of trouble, multiplies the time and effort it takes to get things done, and often leaves me confused.  It slows my adaptation to certain kinds of innovations, my techno-dinosaur status a testament to that. And it’s often problematic for others.

But my love for discipline and order may be greater still.  I love, I need, a disciplined life.  So much so that I am miserable when I stray too far.  Whenever I do, I vow to return as soon as I can.

Just to be concrete, let me describe a disciplined day.  I wake in the morning, make a cup of coffee, and sit briefly with the newspaper.  Then I write in my journal, trying to square up my inner and outer lives, understanding what I’m thinking and feeling so that I act as consciously as I can through the day.  That’s a discipline all by itself. Then I meditate—not for long, maybe 20 – 30 minutes.  You know that the regularity and ‘proper’  practice of meditation requires discipline.

Then I write.  These days I’m writing essays for my blog.  In days past, I would be working on a professional article or a book.  Having “earned it” through all this disciplined activity, I then exercise for an hour or an hour and a half.  By now it’s early afternoon and I begin to read.  At this time of day, it’s usually a nonfiction book, sometimes in keeping with my writing project but often just something that interests me. I like to learn, always have, and I feel better about life if I’m actively engaged in learning. Focusing, trying to understand, keeping up…these require discipline.

Then the rest of the day—it could now be 3:00 or 4:00—is  open.  I rest, talk with Franny or friends or both.  I read a novel.  I nap, a new and delightful habit. It all feels good, in much the way that I feel deeply relaxed and free after vigorous exercise.  And when I awaken in the morning, assured that this is how I’ll spend my day, I greet the morning with uncomplicated calm and pleasure.  Which, I’ll admit, is part of my goal in life.

There’s more to value in a discipline than a well-scheduled day, of course.  Like maintaining clear, sturdy, kind attitudes and positions with children, grandchildren, family, friends, colleagues—and strangers.  But for this essay, let me try to explain why day-to-day discipline, in itself, has become my holy grail.

At the least, sustaining a disciplined approach to life gives me a sense of self-control.  It makes me feel like I am the prime mover.  When immersed in my various disciplines, I feel like I have chosen my activities.  Nothing is just happening to me.  Of equal importance, discipline, which requires a great deal of concentration on what I’m doing, deflects lots of the internal chatter and emotional winds, the currents of discontent and self-criticism, that readily push me about when I am lax.  Ultimately, random or unscheduled days aren’t as calming as trustworthy regimens.

Discipline brings a rhythm into my life.  You do this and then that and then this again.  Movement from activity to activity becomes almost unconscious.  Rhythm has a way of taking over, making every motion feel almost effortless.  Think of running or dancing.  When I am in rhythm my body moves and my mind flows—without thinking.  I’m not fighting myself.  So it is when I move from my journal to meditation, from meditation to writing to … well you get the picture.  I’m dancing.

Here’s the irony about discipline, though.  Just as self-discipline provides a sense of control, it simultaneously releases me from my need for control.  The safety of control helps me let go.  In the midst of journal writing, for instance, my mind wanders.  My imagination frees up.  My thoughts go to ordinary, as well as surprising, even sometimes forbidden, places.  Letting go within the confined spaces of a discipline brings out a sense of spaciousness, a safe place to be out of control; and being out of control in that safe way reassures me that I am in control.  Are you following?

There’s also a problem that comes with the need for discipline: it never completely succeeds.  I have it and I lose it.  When I’ve been disciplined for a long while, the loss sometimes feels like a relief—I can play, I can relax; I can be naughty—but it’s also a little bit like falling off the wagon.  That first drink may not lure me away for long but a number of drinks will.  Then I’m disappointed with myself.  I berate myself.  Then I exhort myself: “Get back into the rhythm, Barry.”  Sometimes I succeed readily and quickly; sometimes the return takes time, even a long time.  At such times, I grow irritable, impulsive, sometimes unhappy.

These rhythms of discipline and laxity, order and chaos, are inevitable for seekers of calm places like me.  And I need ways to cope with the downside, the periods when I flounder. I’ve come to believe that the measure of my success and failure isn’t in the fall from grace as much as it is in two closely related activities: my ability to tolerate the chaotic times, and the persistence of my efforts to return.

I could devote an entire essay to my efforts to tolerate — the times when I lose a sense of order and purpose, when I feel unable to move forward towards whatever goals I have been seeking or towards an ability to live comfortably without goals.  Over time, my tolerance seems to have grown with my ability to trust that ‘this too shall pass.’  And I don’t use the word “trust” lightly.  It is, as the scholars would call it, an evidence-based conclusion that I have drawn.  I’ve done my research, you see.

While writing in my journal for 50 years, and while meditating, it has been hard to miss: the disappointing times pass.  I am less anxious when the chaos arrives.  Its strength dissipates when I don’t fight it as hard as once I did.   And my ability to return to a disciplined life grows stronger.

I am like a fish out of water when my life in unstructured for too long.  I don’t breathe as well.  So persistence for me isn’t so much a choice as a necessity—but no longer an onerous necessity nor even a way to return.  Persistence, itself, has grown into one of my most important disciplines.

 

 

 

 

An Old Man With Too Much Time on His Hands

Scientists tell us that exercise is so good for us that it can reverse the course of aging.  In my heart I don’t believe them, but I persist in the exercise anyway.  I’m a little like the kid who wouldn’t say anything bad about God, just in case God really exists, and is listening.  So regarding exercise, periodically  I feel like I’ve fallen behind in my efforts and decide on some Herculean effort to make up for past sins.  Not the wisest course, I’m told.

Last Sunday morning was one of those times.  Franny was away.  I had no plans.  I had some thinking to do.  The whole day yawned in front of me like an empty vessel, and a long walk, maybe a very long walk, seemed the perfect antidote to my lapsed practice.

I’m going to walk the Boston Sports Club, about 5 miles away, work out on the weight machines, then walk back.  I’ve long had a romance with the idea of covering distances on my own steam.  Being on the trail, especially in the high mountains of California and Colorado.  By the time I’ve walked a mile or two, I’m absorbed in the scenery.  I stop thinking and I lose myself.  A delicious time for me.

The walk along Lexington and Winter Street is not quite as pristine as the High Sierras but 10 to 12 miles and a workout at the midpoint offers its own, funky excitement. And I am using the word “excitement” literally.  I don’t know why.

The walk begins well.  My muscles feel good.  The arthritis in my knees and ankle feel manageable.  There’s a jauntiness to my stride.  At least that’s the inner experience.

I love the cool air, even when a light rain begins.  I promise myself to be mature.  If the rain intensifies, I’ll duck into a store and call an Uber — the St. Bernard of the Lexington wilds.  At the moment, though, I am calm.  A man of No Mind, as the Buddhists say.

After a few miles, though, thoughts intrude:

“What kind of nutty thing are you doing, Barry?  You’re 77.  Are you trying to reassure yourself?  Why?  Aren’t you more mature than that?  Is this one of those crazy, old man dares that leads to trouble?”

Then another part of me responds:

“Don’t be silly.  I’m not climbing Everest, for God’s sake.  I love the freedom of walking.  And OK, I do want to check myself out, see how well this old machine is working. Will it hold up?  Do I still have my stamina?”

The walk is becoming a doctor’s appointment, and I’m the doctor.

I’d like to say that the argument ended there but it went on for a mile or more.  In fact, I do reassure myself:

“You’ll be fine.  You might not be able to play basketball anymore, but you can walk.  You’re strong enough.  You’ll probably walk this way into your 80’s…

“Yeah but You’re going to be sore and, by the sixth mile or so, you’ll be pushing, pushing.  It’ll stop being fun.  You’ll start worrying about injuring yourself.  This whole gambit will end up a disappointment.”

By now, I’ve heard enough of this grumbling.  I remind the damned pessimist in me that science is on my side.  I had just read a research article about how exercise slows cognitive and physical decline and relieves stress.

“Sure, sure, but if you push hard enough, you’ll cripple yourself.  You’ll live longer but it won’t be such a pleasure.”

I’d like to dismiss the whole argument but, as I walk, it fades in and out of consciousness.  For the most part, I walk on, feeling good even during the steep climb to the gym.  There, after some weight training, I decide not to call an Uber. The rain has stopped.  The training has given my legs time to rest.  Why not walk home?  There’s only about 5 miles to go.  By the end, it will have been a grind but a virtuous grind, the kind that makes you feel great when you’re done.

After about a mile, the refreshed feeling is gone.  The steps are slower, more effortful.  There’s very little rhythm.  I begin to wonder if my old friend, will power, is there for me.

I could still call an Uber but I don’t.

During the last several years, I’ve not wanted to push myself too hard.

“What for?” I say.  “I’ll never be in great shape again.  I’m never going to write my novel.  I’m not going to build another organization.”

“Relax, man! Enjoy the easy life,” I say out loud.

“Bullshit,” I reply.

But I have always gotten something from pushing myself.  A sense of satisfaction.  A sense of moving beyond my ordinary self.  I keep walking.

I’m content with the grind for another 15 minutes — until I begin to wonder if I might have a heart attack or a stroke out here on the street.  All alone on the street. People my age do, after all.   Franny would be mad at me if she knew what I was doing.  She’d say I’m being irresponsible.  “Why do old men keep challenging themselves in this way? Besides, don’t you understand…other people care for you.  You are being  selfish.”

Of course, I’ve got an answer to that critique:

“I’m not in the desert or above tree line in the mountains.  I’m walking in the suburbs.  Don’t be a sissy!”

And so it went until I was home, cooling for a bit and listening to Duke Ellington play Mood Indigo.  Then a shower to end all showers and an easy chair with a book. There’s no interior dialogue that I can hear now.  I am exhausted.  And I am pleased with my day.

 

 

 

A Glimpse of Humility; A Glimpse of Divinity

I am trying to take a family picture with Franny’s iPad.  They wait expectantly on the sofa as I press one button after another.  Nothing works.  I see my son, Gabe, squelch a suggestion.  He is being kind.  Kinder than my grandsons, Eli, 9, and Jack, 6, who are eager to take over and show me how.  Soon Franny gives up on me and takes the picture herself.  But this defeats the purpose.  We want a picture with Franny in it.  She’s so often the photographer and rarely included in the pictures.  My daughter-in-law, Rachael, hops up and gets it done.  I try to cover my humiliation with a joke about old dogs and everyone laughs but the humiliation remains.

Of my many flaws, a lack of humility stands tallest.  It’s the rare person who I don’t think could benefit from my insight, the rare conversation that I couldn’t enhance with my analysis.  No one would mistake me for a mendicant monk demonstrably grateful for a cup of broth.  I may be helpless with technology and  comfortable in the role of supplicant to those who are more adroit, but this is the kind of exception that proves the rule.

I was raised in the belief that virtually any problem will yield to intelligent, concerted effort. This “can do” attitude has proven a great asset in my life.  It has made me braver and more adventurous.  But it has also turned my will into a domineering, godlike, force.  When stumped or mystified I don’t look to the heavens or even to friends.  I just try harder.

I know that the confidence born of my “can do” attitude has endured beyond its shelf life; and it is faltering.  Age is a great teacher.  I find myself, more and more often, in humbling situations.  Some are comical: I’ve lost about 3 inches in height, for example, and people seem so tall, so imposing to me now.  Some are sobering: There are so many things I once could do and cannot do now.

In retirement, I live on the sidelines.  From that perspective, I can’t avoid seeing how talented other people are.  I see, for instance, that Yolanda, my successor at the Institute for Nonprofit Practice, isn’t an updated version of me; she’s a wholly different person who is more capable of leading a national expansion of the INP than I ever could.  I find myself amazed by brilliant, young writers like Ta Nehisi Coates. Where once I might have aspired to be their equal, now know that I won’t be.  I’ll need to think in far more modest terms.  Living a long life does that.  It points to your limits and makes you take notice.

The experience can be brutal and dispiriting but it can be exhilarating too.  This is a discovery for me, maybe the most important discovery in this phase of my life.

My view of humility is changing.  There are regressions, to be sure, but most of the time I no longer see it as giving in or giving up.  It doesn’t seem like something forced on me, imposed by those who are stronger or smarter or more successful.  Humility is in the process of separating itself from the humiliation that often accompanied my failures.  Sometimes it is the occasion not of shame but of quiet and relaxation. I don’t have to press and perform.  I’m off the hook.

Humility hasn’t come naturally to me, neither by psychological inclination nor through religious practice. Jewish, Christian, and Buddhist notions of humility, however seductive, played no part in my childhood and youth.  Over the years, their lessons seemed appealing, but I kept them at a distance.  That distance is closing now.

Maybe the best news about my budding humility is how much I have to learn.  I love to learn.  I love to have goals.  And I hope that I have plenty time to pursue them.

Of late, I’ve had rare and tantalizing glimpses of this new adventure—moments of humility that open instead of close me.

At those rare times when I begin an activity with a genuine curiosity, when I don’t know what to do or how to think, when I don’t try to impose my ideas and my will on situations, I see them as though for the first time.  I am surprised, amazed, fascinated.  Humility makes experience fresher, more immediate.

I am learning that humility makes it possible to connect more genuinely to others.  I recall so many times that I have argued with people—Franny, for instance—insisting that she sees the truth of my insights.  My insistence only pushes her away.  Usually, my argument is a projection of myself— “you’d see it this way if you were me.”  Eventually, I recognize my failure, my ineffectuality, my powerlessness.  Then, at last, I give up.  At moments like these, there is a vacuum, an open space. I look at Franny and ask: “what is it she is saying? …  What is she trying to teach me?”  It’s only then that we touch one another.  This is happening more these days.

I have been as arrogant about myself as I have been about others, proud and insistent on my self knowledge, amassed and curated over decades of introspection and observation. But lately I’ve grown skeptical of my proud “knowledge,” as it often consists of frozen insights, good for one period of life but not forever.  This realization—it’s not just skepticism—is a little frightening.  It tells me that the ground of my being may not be as solid as I had thought.  But there’s also freedom in making room for the new.

Years ago, my friend, Bruce Powell, talked with me—in whispered tones, it seemed—about a Kabbalistic notion called “trim tzum.”  According to the 16^th century Jewish sage, Isaac Luria, when God created the universe, He understood that human beings would be suffocated by a fully determined world.  So he receded, just a bit, making room for human beings to exercise their own free will and develop their own searching intelligence.

When I created my world—my understanding of myself and others—through will and intellect, I didn’t know how important it was to make room for the ideas, energies and, maybe, the love of others.  I lacked the requisite humility. I now see that the humbling of old age may serve as the key to opening myself to all of them.  And I know, though I don’t know how, that if I do, I will find a touch of the divinity I have always questioned, and, as it turns out, may have always been seeking.

 

Dignity, Courage, and Decline

In my 70’s, the experience of decline partly defines my every day.  Each morning I look to the window for a sunny day.  I think of all the interesting things I might do.  And I conduct a bodily inventory.  How’s that knee feeling?  Did the Prilosec ward off heartburn during the night?  How’s my hearing?  How energetic do I feel?  I laugh a little as I go through my list.  But there’s more sadness and weariness than laughter in this downward journey.

For years now, I’ve tried to offset the sadness with irony and a focus on my extraordinarily good fortune, but the inventory acts as a constant companion to these attempts.  The social critic, Malcolm Crowley beautifully captured the feeling.  “I feel old,” he says,

• when it becomes an achievement to do thoughtfully, step by step, what he once did instinctively;
• When his bones ache;
• When there are more and more little bottles in the medicine cabinet, with instructions for taking four times a day;
• When he can’t stand on one leg and has trouble pulling on his pants;
• When he hesitates on the landing before walking down a flight of stairs;
• When he spends more time looking for things misplaced than he spends using them after he (or more often his wife) has found them;
• When he forgets names, even of people he saw last month;
• When everything takes longer to do—bathing, shaving, getting dressed or undressed—but time passes quickly, as if he were gathering speed while coasting downhill.

Now if my daily inventory grades out on the positive side, I feel optimistic, ready for the day.  If not, I prepare to fight through the day, to make it as good as possible.  Laying around, for instance, would be a step too far, the first in a downward slide that I don’t like to even imagine.  I’ll exercise even if I’d rather not.  Read or make some calls when a nap seems like a good idea. And I take pleasure in fighting through the wish to give in to the negative.

There’s a purpose to this checklist: to determine a baseline of possibilities. The challenge is to conduct it as honestly as possible, leaving aside both wishes and fears.

Of course, honesty isn’t entirely objective.  All of us screen reality through cultural filters. In stoic cultures, for instance, we ignore signs of decay.  In self-indulgent cultures like ours, we give freer reign to complaining about our fate.  If culture glorifies “successful aging,” we’d best ignore the negative, or shame on us.  So, change our diet.  Exercise.  Cultivate optimism.

Sometimes it’s hard to read the signs.  Some years ago, for instance, I felt a constant weariness and turned to the most obvious explanation: I had passed my 70th birthday. I must be getting old.  “Get used to it,” I told myself.  But as it turned out, I had iron deficiency anemia, which was treatable.  After a few weeks of iron infusions, I felt like my old self.  So there’s some learning involved in translating the results of these inventories.

In the May, 2019, issue of the New Yorker, Mark Singer published an interview with David Milch, an acclaimed screenwriter and producer (NYPD Blue, Deadwood, and other heady and popular TV series).  Milch suffers from Alzheimer’s. and is now in the middle stages of this dreadful disease.  He’s become increasingly anxious and depressed.  Sometimes he gets lost and has to call his wife to rescue him.  Normally, a brash and decisive man, Singer tells us, Milch now seems tentative, almost frail, at 75.

Yet he continues to write every day with a commitment that belies—maybe defies—the terrifying decline in his mental capacity.  As I read the interview, I felt that Milch’s attitude spoke authentically and deeply to my own concerns about decline, so I thought to share my own musings on this topic with you.

The interview begins by exploring what having Alzheimer’s has meant to Milch, He notes, “(T)here’s an experience you have as every day goes on of what you’re no longer capable of and…it’s an accumulation of indignities.  At a more fundamental level, it’s an accretion of irrevocable truths: this is gone, and that’s gone.”  

The image of one thing after another drifting away is so damned powerful.  I imagine myself grasping after these floating objects, reaching and reaching, trying not only to hold them and bring them back but somehow also reintegrating them within my body or my mind.  But I can’t.  Much as I know that they are gone, I can’t readily reconcile myself to their absence.  I’ll pretend they’re still here.  I’ll pretend for a long while, until I really believe that they are gone.

What drifts away—or what is severed by disease and accident—isn’t like a replaceable machine part.  Each part, each memory, each tendon and organ, has been a member of an intricately organized whole.  It is the whole that constitutes our essential being; and the decline of the parts threatens the whole, threatens our sense of ourselves.  The drifting parts whittle away our selves.

The “accumulated indignities” that Milch talks about, shame us—shame me.  Unlike mere embarrassments, shame is a primitive, painful feeling that harks to early childhood: to being physically exposed, caught naked, being criticized harshly in front of others.  My cheeks burn.  I want to hide.  And many older people do run.  They “hide,”  or better…find refuge,  in elder communities, comforted by the shared decline of most of those around them.  I won’t yet abide this solution.  I still feel vital and strong.  But I’ve begun to understand its appeal.

To ward off the shame of decline, Milch says that “…we all make deals,…, in terms of how we think about the process of our aging.  It’s a series of givings aways, a making of peace with givings away…It’s kind of a relentless series of adjustments to what you can do….”   There is an “accumulated deletions of ability.  And you adjust… whether you want to or not.”

At this point in the interview, Singer asks:  “…whether, despite what Alzheimer’s was stealing from him, it had given anything in return.  Yes, Milch responds, there is.  “There’s a continuous sense of urgency…There’s an acute sense of time’s passage. Things are important.  You don’t want to be inconsequential in your perspective on things.  I feel that with an increasing acuteness—that everything counts.”

What Milch asks for in the time he has left is “for the grace and dignity of a lucid cogitation.  I’m asking of my faculties such as they are, in whatever diminution they are, to meet you fairly.”  What I think he means is the ability to live life without artifice and evasion. Practicing a radical honesty, Milch believes, bestows a “grace and dignity” to life.

He has “disabused” himself “of any thought of a normal future” but allows himself “a provisional optimism about the possibilities of what time I will be allowed.  And I’m determined to experience what life will allow me… And I permit myself a belief that there is possible for me a genuine happiness and fulfillment in my family and the work I do.”

Alongside Milch, I also feel the gravitational pull of decline.  I ache with it and I know that there’s no avoiding it.  There are a thousand books now being published that practice one form of denial or another. And indeed, I have written my share of blogs that join the poets in trying to transform the fear and trembling of aging into some form of wisdom and excitement.  But I am coming to believe that there may be a greater dignity—and liberation—in simply acknowledging the ache and the place it has in my life.  It is another way to be unapologetically myself.

 

 

Is It Florida Time?

Franny and I just returned from five days in Florida.  We had wanted some relief from the New England winter and a break from routine.   Admittedly, the idea of a vacation defies credulity since I’m retired and on permanent vacation.  But we like new places and time to explore.

As it turned out, the Florida temperatures—high 90’s every day—were oppressive and less conducive to outdoor play than 50’s in New England.  Still swam and walked in the relative cool of morning. We read for hours and explored the “new south” in an air conditioned car.  Since childhood, Florida has ranked high on my list of places not to go—too crass, too humid—but we wanted to give it a chance to redeem itself, which it did.  Sarasota, Venice, and other coastal cities were filled with art museums, quirky town centers, and beautiful beaches with diverse and intermixing ethnicities.

We chose Sarasota primarily to explore Pelican Cove, an idyllic community of about 1200 elder refugees from the intellectual and artistic centers of the north.  Residents had created their own “university,” with classes taught by renowned experts and recent enthusiasts.  There are self-organized groups for yoga, gardening, folk music and jazz—you name it.  The housing is comfortable, unpretentious, and gloriously set on the Sarasota bay, with sunrises and sunsets welcoming and wishing farewell to every day.

Friends of friends, who had just purchased a PC home, showed us around.  Michael, the founder of TV’s Nova programming, and Lynn, a psychologist, spent a couple of hours singing PC’s glories, as if they were paid—and brilliant—sales people eager to line their pockets with gold.  But no.  They were Pelican Cove lovers and we paid close attention.

For a couple of years now, I have been writing about what I think of as the next-to-last period of life.  That period, sometimes brief, sometimes long, begins with the realization, deep in our bones, that our time on earth is limited, and ends with dementia, disability, or death.  Generally, our culture paints this period in shades of gray, impressed mostly by diminished capabilities and grumpy moods.  I’m impressed by its intensity and vibrancy.  David Milch, creator of NYPD, puts it this way: “There’s an acute sense of time’s passing.  Things are important.  You don’t want to be inconsequential in your perspective on things…everything counts.”

Pelican Cove looked to me like an active experiment in making the most of this extraordinary period.  It seems to be built for people in their 70’s, who are still physically capable and seeking to suck the marrow of the time remaining.  A morning walk, a little yoga by 10:00, some reading or a seminar in the early afternoon, a nap at 3:00, sunsets and twilight, ideal for contemplation and meditation.  A place and a time for relaxation, maybe even a hint of wisdom in the offing.

And yet, except for maybe a month or two in the winter, the Pelican Cove life seems a little premature for Franny, who isn’t yet 70, and for me, too.  We aren’t ready to cut or limit our ties to our children, grandchildren, friends, and even old colleagues.  We’ve both retired but remain more or less connected to our professional communities and, with them, our ability to contribute to fields whose goals we still feel committed to: Franny to children, through early childhood education and policy; me to equity and diversity through the education of nonprofit leaders.

Neither of us earn a living any more but neither have we made complete transitions into what is generally considered retirement.  There’s too much energy and opportunity remaining.  Sure, the kind of work we have done throughout our life can never be completed, but maybe I’m waiting for a sign that says you’ve done what you can.  Be gone?  Nope. Not yet.  The connections I feel when working are too deep and satisfying to give up entirely in order to relax or to pursue “interests”—all the time.

I know how simplistic that declaration sounds.  And I know that it’s important to avoid black and white distinctions: working and retired; professional and volunteer; active and relaxed; letting go and holding on.  There are all kinds of mixed, often complex balances that can be struck.  Even while living in a community like Pelican Cove.

But for me there’s something about Pelican Cove that feels like withdrawal, like a radical break from ways that I have been engaged during my entire life.  Having family and friends and colleagues 1500 miles away, feels like divorcing myself for the natural life cycle.  My imagery about this phase of the cycle includes close, visceral ties to the people I know and love.  They have been so much a part of my life that, in a way, they are me.  Or the relationships we have formed is a essential to who I am.  Distancing myself from them feels like distancing from myself—a kind of alienation.

Pelican Cove seems like an admission that I’m not yet willing to make any more than I might choose a monastery to pursue my spiritual development with greater intensity. For now, it says that I will stop being a citizen of the larger world, that I will stop striving, and begin to focus almost exclusively on amusing myself.

My objections don’t hold for everyone, of course.  Franny tells me, for instance, that she has always held service to community as a sacred act.  Particularly service that isn’t directly reciprocated, isn’t even well known.  And she yearns for a time when she can devote herself to it.  She might not be any more ready for Pelican Cove than I am but she can see the pathway there.  I admire, maybe even envy her for that.

But it isn’t exactly me.  Too much of me still faces outward, towards the greater world, even though I do precious little to help it.  And I have too many internalized injunctions against a life of leisure and a life focused entertaining myself.  I do wonder whether the injunctions have begun to wane, whether I need to work harder to diminish their hold on me, in order to be free to fully enter the leisurely stage of life promised and promoted by American culture.

The near perfection of Pelican Cove amplifies these questions.  It makes me uneasy, as though I should make decisions, as though I should move on with my life and not cling to what some people might call the past.  What is clear, though, is that Franny and I are not going to make a decision now.  It is premature.  And I, for one, remain mostly comfortable and enlivened by the uncertainty.   In that way, Pelican Cove has been exquisitely clarifying for me.

 

Don’t Tell Me About Old Age

Franny and I belong to a study group, whose members were already pushing old age when we joined 19 years ago.  One day I asked them to participate in a little bit of research.  “Sure,” they said, because they generally like me.  Until I announced the subject: What’s it like to be old.  “Old?  Who’s old?”  I thought they were kidding.  With the exception of Franny, our ages range from 76 to 87.  We had already lost a member to cancer.  Others have suffered heart attacks, strokes—you name it.  Still, when I pressed, they looked at me like I had belched, loudly and involuntarily in public.

Mine was more than a breach of etiquette.  It was as though I had challenged their identity, or maybe their lives.  “I’m old,” I declared, trying to break through their resistance with my own candor.  They didn’t bite.  To accept their age meant accepting society’s stereotypes of aging, including the likelihood of being dismissed and disdained, a self-portrait they must not internalize.

The fight isn’t only against the way we are pigeon holed; it’s also a cry for independence, for control of our lives.  In spite of the way that old folks are portrayed in the movies, we are not children, bumbling idiots, or simply shells of our former selves.  We know ourselves pretty well; and we don’t want to be told who we are or what to do.

Their opposition to what they imagined would be the premise of my research, then, was necessarily fierce and sustained.

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Every culture has its unofficial, generally unstated ideas about everything, including  marriage, parenting, well being, morality, and old age.  Collectively, these ideas can be called a cultural narrative.  They come to us through word of mouth, through TV, film, and other social media.  The stories and images are ubiquitous.  Growing up in a given culture, we hardly know that we are taking them in; and, after a while, it is hard to distinguish them from what we think of as our own feelings and thoughts.

The struggle to make that distinction, the struggle to know ourselves as distinctive individuals, to determine our own character, is one of life’s great dramas.

The drama plays out with particular intensity during old age because old people have lost many of the defining activities and social arrangements—family and work, especially—that once served as barriers between themselves and the influence of cultural imagery.

The contemporary narrative of old age is familiar to most of us.  It differs from the narratives of other eras and other cultures, where the accumulated experience of old people is venerated.  Instead, it emphasizes a loss of vigor, competence, and productivity, and the absence of knowledge that’s appropriate to and valued by society now.  American culture generally glorifies youth and fears—sometimes, despises—old age.  Just look at comic or tragicomic portraits of old people in TV, film, and popular fiction.  At best, we forgive our old people their incompetence or chuckle affectionately at their bumbling ways.  At worst, we distance ourselves from their neediness and dependence.  And we are offended when they take the places of better qualified youth and drain the resources of the already beleaguered younger generations.

Even more painful, I think, is the narrative of continual, remorseless decline and diminishment.  Accordingly, bodies grow weaker and demand more attention.  Minds grow slower and command less respect.  Instead of continued leadership in families and communities, old people become invisible.

We may fight the inevitable with exercise, diet, and cosmetic surgery but, in the end, there’s nothing much we can do about it.  We might slow or modify the downward journey but that’s all.  For the most part, we accept its inexorable logic.  Perhaps not consciously but subconsciously, we internalize the fundamental message of the narrative.  Margaret Morganroth Gullett puts it beautifully: “We are aged by culture.”

What this means is that we filter our actual, distinctive experience through the cultural imagery.  We live as though the narratives are more real than any genuine feelings that don’t quite fit the narratives.  It’s hard to escape their omnivorous desire to tell us who we really are. So we discard large parts of ourselves.

This does not mean that we fall before putting up a fight.  During the last few decades, the Baby Boomers, anticipating their own decline and accustomed to having their way, have championed an alternative narrative.  They call it “Successful Aging.”

John Wallis Rowe and Robert Kahn, whose book popularized the “successful aging” movement,  tell us that healthy aging involves three main factors: (1) being free of disability or disease; (2) having high cognitive and physical abilities, and (3) interacting with others in meaningful ways.  This calls upon us to eat good food, to exercise regularly, and to cultivate a friendship circle or close community ties around churches, synagogues or more secular venues.  Follow this prescription and you will live a (relatively) happy and fulfilling life.

But after reading enough “successful aging” stories, they began to feel a little strained.  The stories look as much like admonitions as reports. The promises seem more aspirational than actual.

Divergence from “successful aging” is too often a cause for shame.  There must be something wrong with you if you succumb to illness, lethargy, or fear.  There must be something you have done or, worse still, something inherent in your character.  If you were a good person, a strong person, a purposeful person, you would be headed towards your goals.  You might fail sometimes but eventually, with effort and the will to succeed, you would get there.  When you don’t, it calls everything about you—your history, your character, sometimes your family or your education—into question.

Cultural narratives, both negative and positive, however, are just that.  They are like theories.  And, as the great anthropologist, Gregory Bateson, once said about theory, “The map is not the territory.” It is not the whole, complex, confusing, and often messy truth about our lives.  It misses the telling details by which we know ourselves.  We make a terrible mistake when we reduce ourselves to a map or a narrative.

It makes no sense to yield entirely to either the anticipation of  “healthy aging,” as though we could pursue the fountain of youth, or to the idea of remorseless decline.  Nor to bounce back and forth between the two: “I’m decrepit.  No, I’m not.  I can be as strong and healthy as ever.  Well, that’s a lie.  I don’t want to deceive myself.  But maybe if I felt better about myself, I could ‘succeed’ as an old person.”

In my view, it is far better to embrace the whole: the vitality and the decline, the freedom from obligations and the loss of place—and the terrible knowledge of mortality. And all those experiences in between.  We are all of these things.  And more.  We never fit entirely within stereotypes.  We know this truth when we take seriously the discrepancies between experience and narrative, when we don’t try to adjust ourselves to a “reality” described by others.

Each of us has our own experience.  It’s a matter of knowing ourselves and trusting our own perceptions.  Only then can we separate ourselves from the cultural narratives of old age.

I know this to be true.  I am aging.  I don’t know how fast or completely.  But I am. And I am alive with energy and thought.  I am mortal, and with each friend whose death I mourn, mortality grows more prominent in my thoughts.  I have just so many days and months and years to live.  That’s a fact.

But when I live my days fully I don’t think very much about decline and death.  I lose myself in the complexity and spaciousness of my life, which isn’t just a passage to death or to health.  It is more like a field of flowers, steams, and rock formations, busy with people and ideas.  Unlike a narrative or a pre-determined journey, the field is alive with possibilities.  When I am present in those fields, my life takes on a timeless quality.