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Elders– Audio

Hi, this is A.J., welcome to our VIP lesson this month. It’s a little bit different topic this month, in fact, elders.

How can you gain more wisdom and meaning in your life? That’s a good question.

Now, I’ve talked in the past about aging in a way where you remain vigorous and strong and you keep being productive and all of that great stuff, but this month we’re going to talk a little bit more about older people. There’s not a politically correct way to say it I guess, elders, is the best way to say it this word, elders, instead of saying old people which doesn’t sound very positive.

An elder, that word gives the idea or the feeling of wisdom, of Gandalf from Lord of the Rings or something. That’s what I think when I hear the world elder.

The reality is that pretty much worldwide at this point, we have what I think is a quite unbalanced culture, especially media culture, which is very much skewed towards youth. In other words, youth is highly valued which is fine, but on the other hand older folks, elders are sort of put down or shown in the negative light or more commonly, not shown at all. They’re sort of invisible. When you go to movies you see lots of young and pretty people. Again that’s fine, we all like looking at young and pretty people, but you see very few older people. You do see them, it’s just less.

So, we have a culture that’s really obsessed with youth. On the one hand there are some great things about that. Youth brings an openness, a flexibility, fun, innovation.

Young people are always ready for the next new thing. That means they’re ready for change, they like change, so all that is fantastic. But there are some down sides, some things that are a little more negative by this obsession with youth.

One, in my opinion, culture completed dominated by youth can really be quite shallow.

I don’t know about you when you were young, maybe you’re young now or at least you feel young, but when I was a teenager or my early 20s, I wasn’t the deepest person in the world. I wasn’t contemplating the meaning of life so much, it was more like fun and adventure and that’s all great but we can kind of miss out on the more subtle principles and truths and values in life when our society is completely focused on youth and fun.

Along with that goes this kind of distraction, which, I think we’ve all seen with social media, mobile phones and all that, constantly jumping from the next new thing, always wanting something new, fast, fast, fast. It creates a very distracted mindset, where it becomes harder for people to just focus in on something that is vital and important and stay focused on it for a long time. That’s not so much a value of youth, especially now.

And, at the very negative end of the spectrum in the worst possible way, sometimes a youth culture can be bullying or cliquish and goes back to a sort of high school mentality or at least high school in the United States where people break out into these little groups and everyone thinks they’re cooler than the other group. It’s not a very accepting or open type of society sometimes. We can see this sometimes with the gossip that we are fed constantly through the media. Again, there are great things about youth, but there are some down sides to it.

I believe that a healthy society and if we look back over the years, hundreds and thousands of years of human existence, human society that balanced societies tend to work the best, where there’s a balance between youth and middle age and what we’ll call elders (older people). Because each age, each age group brings something important and vital to a society and we need to respect and value all three and use the advantages, the gifts of all three.

Youth, of course, brings that energy and vitality, which is fantastic. We all love it and we need that.

Middle aged, at its best, can bring leadership, because at middle age there’s enough energy to still get things done and be productive, but there’s also an increased experience, an increased wisdom, an increased knowledge. So traditionally, if we look at traditional societies of over, again, hundreds and thousands of years, we see that leadership and those tend to be the active leaders and managers of a society, of a group.

Then finally, elders, people who are older. Nowadays we would say they’re retired.

These traditionally were the people who provided that really deep wisdom. They were the people in the group, in the society that had the most experience obviously, because they’d lived the longest. They’d seen the most and so they could provide a balance to that crazy youthful energy.

Let’s talk about something we don’t hear much about in the media in our societies anymore, which are the advantages, the strength of the elders, of older people, whatever that means to you 60, 70, 80 and above. These people tend to get more and more invisible and if you are in that age group then you know what I mean. I think nowadays elders are much less respected and valued than they were 50 or 100 years ago or more.

What do elders provide? What can they give us as a

society and even as individuals?

1. Wisdom

Let’s define wisdom as deep knowledge that comes from experience. In a more practical sense, what you can find with older people is that they often can see through the trends, fashions and the fads. When you’re younger you tend to jump onto these things and you’re like oh, this is so great, all the new things are so awesome. But, older people because they’ve been around a long time, they’ve seen some of these things come and go and they get much less excited about fads and fashions and trends.

I think that’s a good thing, it’s a nice balance, because you can see things in a greater perspective. You can evaluate the value of something more skillfully. Another thing elders can bring is…

1. A kind of timeless knowledge

This means human principles that go beyond our current technology that transcends our current media, that transcends current events. We’re bombarded constantly with new things happening in the news and media technology changes and all this stuff, but there are deeper human principles that have been true, that have been useful, that have been powerful, for thousands of years and I think older people tend to be more in touch with those deeper principles that our youthful culture has forgotten.

Another great thing that elders can bring, that older people can contribute is…

1. The fact that they are better bullshit detectors, in my experience.

Because they have more experience they’ve just seen more bullshit in their lives and they generally see through it more easily. Now bullshit is a kind of slang for something that’s not true, that’s deceptive, something like that and when you’re young you tend to believe things more easily, you’re more gullible. To be gullible means you just believe things automatically right away. Not all young people are gullible but I think they tend to be more gullible than older people, elders, who have been around a very long time, who have seen many things come and go, have had a lot of experiences and those people just tend to be able to look at things and see that they’re just not true, that they’re bullshit. That can be a valuable skill, and one that we shouldn’t ignore.

Let’s talk about how you can use this in your own life. If you’re not an elder, if you’re not older, if you’re young or middle aged, seek out elder people. Seek out older people as friends, and especially as mentors, because their wisdom can be very, very valuable. Again, we are in our media culture and schools where I think we’re often programmed to think of older people as being uncool. They’re uncool they don’t understand anything. They don’t even know how to use Facebook very well or something like that. We have this negative idea that they’re clueless.

And maybe they are clueless about some things or maybe they’re not, because I’ve met plenty of older people who are very tech savvy and understand technology very well, and others who aren’t, but that’s not so important. What’s important is to focus on their strengths, what they’re good at and not to discount, not to say someone is useless or just ignore them because they aren’t good at certain things, when they have other gifts that are very important.

They can make incredibly good mentors, because of their long experience and knowledge and those deep principles, so respect their gifts, rather than mocking them for their lack of trendiness, respect their gifts. Respect their wisdom and experience.

Respect the fact that they do see through bullshit. And so if they’re telling you that this trend is bullshit or I’ve seen this come and go many times or I don’t understand this, this is no big deal. Instead of dismissing them immediately thinking they’re old and don’t understand, listen to them because they may have some truth in there.

Let me give you a story about someone who influenced me. He’s no longer living, a man named John Wooten, but when he was living he was seen as one of the great coaches, a great basketball coach. Perhaps the greatest college basketball coach of all time, and he used character-based leadership, something we’ve talked about in the past. John Wooten was very old fashioned in some ways. He talked about deep values, he wasn’t just trying to manipulate his players he tried to make them become better people.

He was just this old school guy, not cool, not trendy and yet, super successful and his players, people who played for him in the past, nowadays they still talk about him with a great deep respect. Karim Abdul Jabar was one of his most famous players, although he coached many famous basketball players. Rather than mocking this man, because he wasn’t cool and trendy all the time, his players respected him for what he did offer, which were things that were more deep and affected them at a very deep level for their entire lives and not just about basketball.

As a middle aged person or a young person, seek out elders. Seek them out as mentors, teachers and even as friends. Listen to them, respect them for their abilities and their knowledge.

Now, what if you are an older person, 60-70-80 and above? My first bit of advice for you is to assert yourself, to be a leader. Again, not all older people but I’ve seen many who shrink in society and become less assertive, because they’re constantly bombarded with the idea that oh, you’re old and you don’t understand things. There are many older people, many elders who can shrink away from society, become less assertive, more timid and I encourage you to do the opposite. Don’t apologize for your lack of trendiness, embrace it.

Embrace it and refuse to be bullied or intimidated by the kind of media culture or the youth obsessed culture that we have now. Don’t be intimidated by that, assert yourself.

Provide leadership. Provide wisdom. You know where I’ve told younger people to seek out mentors. Well, as an older person with a great deal of experience, find people to be a mentor to. Offer your knowledge. Offer your experience to others.

Contribute in this way. You could do this in your field, if you have a certain job or career field that you feel you could still be help with and mentor someone in, or you could do it in a more general life sense with a grandchild or younger person in general, it doesn’t matter. You could volunteer for Big Brothers or Big Sisters, an organization in the United States, and there are many others, where young people are paired with older people so the older person can guide them and be a mentor. Get out there, don’t retreat.

I hate this word retirement, because it has this idea that you’re retreating from the world, retreating from society, that you’re going to lay around indoors and do nothing.

That’s horrible. It’s fine to rest sure, but don’t escape from society, you have a lot to contribute so get out there and do it in some way. Be a mentor. Be a leader. Guide other people. Don’t do it in a condescending way where you’re talking down to them, just offer what you know. Offer your wisdom. Offer your experience and they’ll take it or they won’t, but be assertive about it.

All right, that is the end of our main lesson. I’ll see you in the commentary where we’ll talk in more detail about this topic.