The Power of the Reading Brain: Reading or Speaking a Word Can Connect Us to the Entire Universe

I’ve begun reading a book called Proust and the Squid: The Story and Science of the Reading Brain, by Maryanne Wolf. Right from the beginning, the book confirmed suppositions I’ve had since I started reading and startled me into wonderful new realizations and connections.

 

Proust, the novelist named in the title, thought of reading as a sanctuary where humans could access realities they could never experience otherwise. The author uses him as a metaphor for ⎼ metaphor, literature, communication, art, creation. The squid is used in the title as an analogy for the squid-like appearance of neurons, as well as the study of neuroscience. The complexity of neurons enables our brains to learn, repair themselves, make and change billions of connections, and change ourselves. The book explains how the brain makes reading possible. Knowing how we’re able to read enhances the sense of wonder that we can read.

 

Wolf describes a discovery by cognitive scientist David Swinney, that when we read a word, even a simple one like bug, we activate in our brain not just one simple meaning but a whole host of associations. It utilizes a vast network of neurons, not just the language areas of the brain and the visual cortex, but areas for emotion, reasoning, memory, etc.

 

When we read the word bug, we can think of a crawling insect, as being bugged by a spy or an intrusive neighbor, a glitch in software, maybe even imagining ourselves in a Volkswagen Beetle. And since our minds can stray when we read, and we empathize with characters and situations we read about, those associations can connect us to incalculable other meanings and locations. It can lead to new ideas. It can, for example, connect to the vegetation or location where we’ve seen a bug, been bitten or graced by them. We bring the story of our lives into each word we read.

 

This richness of associations depends on the richness of what we’ve previously stored away. This informs us of the need for children to have a rich upbringing, to meet a variety of people, stimuli, and experiences. For them to be read to, and for them to begin reading a wide variety of literature once they’re able to read. When I was 4 or so my father read literature to me, like the romantic play Cyrano de Bergerac. This instilled in me a love for the possible intimacy of words and storytelling that has lasted throughout my life.

 

All children, and parents, need to have the economic resources to make this richness of upbringing possible⎼ to have good health care, good schools, and a society that appreciates and supports children, parents, literature, and education. As the word bug is connected to our whole lives, the child is interconnected with all of society. We all benefit from a well-cared for and educated younger generation.

 

Also, the more indirect and complex the semantical structure of the written sentence, the more vivid the experience of the reader. Wolf quotes the poet Emily Dickinson as saying, “Tell the truth, but tell it slant.” Tell it with echoes. When told indirectly, more risk is involved, and we take in more of the unexpected. Our imagination and empathy are stimulated, and we have more opportunity to encounter and make connections with ourselves and others….

 

 

*To read the whole article, please click on the following link to The Good Men Project.

An Illusion None of Us Can Afford: An Opportunity All of Us Can Embrace

We humans have many biases, but one that often asserts itself is the negativity bias, or a propensity to select, or attend to negative instead of positive information. We often expect the worst. We do this so the worst won’t happen, or so we can take steps to avoid it.

 

But often, the bias can do the opposite, and lead us to inaction. It can cause depression, or a sense of powerlessness. We can tell ourselves we can’t do anything to avoid whatever we fear will happen or to stop the dismal future we fear is inevitable⎼ even when the only thing making it inevitable is our inaction. We might hide from feeling the reality of the danger because we fear that even the thought is too much to bear; but the reality would be so much worse to face.

 

This is happening to our nation, and maybe our species, right now⎼ in the US, with the dangers of a DJT administration. We might know intellectually how awful he is but ignore what he’s telling us he will do if he wins, because we can’t believe it. Somewhere inside us, it feels impossible that such a destructive result could occur. We can’t, I can’t, believe that our world could change so drastically and get so much worse⎼ and not just the human world in the US but everywhere. But, of course, it can. If DJT somehow becomes president again, NATO would be undermined, and dictators would have even freer rein than they do now to undermine democratic nations.

 

DJT said he would invoke the Insurrection Act on day one of his imagined new administration, and use the military to make him a dictator. He’d suspend the constitution, suspend the rule of law, round up thousands, and initiate rule by him alone. It’s illegal, unconstitutional, but that has never stopped him before. We must stop him.

 

I’m not making this up. We know this. Read the 2025 Project. Listen to his speeches if you can stand it. He copies Hitler, Mussolini, etc. in his language and emotion, promises to “root out” all the “vermin,” imprison those who oppose him. He might end social freedoms, freedom of speech, voting rights, legal rights, abortion rights, workers’ rights, end legal concepts of gender, racial, and religious equality. He’d give ever more preference economically and otherwise to the rich and diminish or end government programs that serve and help most of us ⎼ he’d end Medicaid, Medicare, and Social Security, end protections in health care, end the Biden reductions in drug costs, end the EPA, privatize the US Post Office, possibly end public schools, etc. ⎼ and make the poorer 90% of us pay the costs of running his dictatorship.

 

Corruption would flourish. Incompetency. I remember when I was younger and traveling in other nations ruled by dictators. In such nations it was common for people to pay not only fees but bribes to officials to get anything done, to get a license to drive a car, to fish, to build a house, whatever. DJT has already shown a propensity for fraud and corruption. He promises to replace civil service workers, who must show competency for the position in order to get the job, with those whose only noteworthy attribute is being a blind follower of his campaign. Imagine the inefficiency of a whole government bureaucracy controlled and populated by people who’ve shown no competency in their jobs. If DJT somehow gets in office again, whatever restraints on him that were in place before would cease.

 

On Christmas, Rachel Maddow spoke with Chris Hayes about the threat posed by DJT Fascism ⎼ and the need for all of us to act, to vote, and help get out the vote ⎼ and speak to our neighbors. To speak not just to share information, but to get to know them. Create a connection, a community. Because this is our time. Not all generations are called upon to act so significantly….

 

*To read the whole post, please click on this link to The Good Men Project.

An Experiment the Universe is Conducting Right Now: Our Theories About Who We Are Shape How We Feel and How We Act ⎼ Revised

When I was teaching high school, students often asked: If it’s true that humans are (or can be) compassionate, why is there so much human-caused suffering and hurt in the world?

 

One scientific experiment greatly influenced, for decades, how many people thought about this question. This is the “obedience experiment” carried out by Stanley Milgram in the early 1960s, just after the beginning of the Eichmann trial. In that experiment, a volunteer was asked to play a teacher to help another person, the “student,” learn word pairs. Each time the “student” replied with the wrong word, the “teacher” would seemingly give them an electric shock. The voltage of the shock was increased with each wrong answer.

 

The “teacher” sat in one room before an electronic control panel and could see through a window into the room where the “student” sat hooked up to wires. A white-coated experimenter stood in the room with the “teacher” encouraging and instructing with comments like, ”Continue using the 450 volt switch for each wrong answer.” The experimenter repeated these instructions even as the “student” began to scream⎼ and later drop over, silent. The “teacher” raised objections at times; but as the instructions continued, the “teacher” continued the shocks. The student was, in fact, an actor; the shocks to the “student” were not real. However, the emotional effect on the “teacher” was real.

 

It was initially reported by Milgram that 65% of the “teachers” continued to shock their students even to a lethal level. But, according to author and researcher Gina Perry, that statistic was only true with one of the 24 versions of the experiment. There were over 700 people involved in the experiments, and the 65% represented only 26 people. There were some variations of the experiment where no one obeyed the authority. If she is correct, this drastically changes how we might understand the experiment.

 

The philosopher Jacob Needleman studied the visual recordings of the experiment and commented on the facial expression and speech of one of the “teachers.” When questioned just after the experiment was over, the “teacher” said, “I don’t like that one bit. I mean, he [the “student”] wanted to get out and we just keep throwing 450 volts…” The teacher was dazed, and under further questioning couldn’t let themself comprehend what they had done. They couldn’t comprehend their own feelings let alone allow themselves to feel what the “student” might have felt.

 

A startling parallel to Milgram was a series of experiments by Doctor of Psychology, Daniel Batson, who tested whether people would act compassionately to save others from suffering. In one experiment, volunteer subjects, like Milgram’s teachers, watched people receive shocks when they incorrectly answered a memory task. The volunteer was told the person they were watching had suffered trauma as a child. They were then given the choice to leave the experiment or receive the shock intended for the supposed trauma victim. Many subjects felt such compassion for the other person they actually volunteered to take on their pain.

 

What is the message of these experiments? Milgram’s experiment is often considered a cautionary tale revealing the potential for evil in all of us⎼ and the “evil” demonstrated by Milgram arises from our propensity to obey authority despite clear evidence of the wrongness of the act. But why do we hear so much more about this experiment than Batson’s, whose work demonstrates the capacity for compassion?…

 

Happy New Year, and may 2024 be an even better year for all of us than we imagine.

*To read the whole article, please go to The Good Men Project.

 

**

Original post:

https://irarabois.com/who-are-we-humans-the-milgram-experiments/

 

When the Air Tastes Sweet: Darkness Can Make the Light Brighter

My first three years of life were lived not far from a chocolate chip cookie factory. It was a great place to spend my primal years. The scent of the cookies made breathing itself a sweet experience. Ever since then, I’ve loved such cookies⎼ and breathing.

 

After college, I served in the Peace Corps in a rural village of the West African nation of Sierra Leone. At one point, I became very sick from a combination of illnesses. There was little food in the village and what was available I couldn’t tolerate. I needed medical care, but the only Doctor I knew of was hours away in the capitol, Freetown.  When I arrived in the capitol, I ate the sole food I could even imagine being near, let alone eating, namely a few chocolate chip cookies which my mom had sent.

 

Maybe it was because of the memory of the chocolate scented air, or maybe because they were from my mom⎼ and maybe they weren’t very nutritious⎼ but I always imagined the cookies, not the medications from the doctor, saved me from starvation. The cookies had such a healing effect on me that the next day, I was able to eat another familiar food, a hamburger. I was lucky I was in Freetown because that was the only city in the country at that time to have a restaurant that served them. After that, my appetite returned. The dark, painful memory lives in my body even now reminding me how much I love eating.

 

Dark times can often make any bit of light seem brighter. I’ve written before about how, lately, I wake up 3, 4, 5 times a night. And I’ve come to feel the physical dark not as a deprivation of light, or as something frightening, but as a comfort and friend. When I get up, and it’s still dark, I look out the window to see what beauty the night had created. For example, in late fall and winter, the moonlight or distant city lights turn tree branches into dramatic sculptures, bare fingers stretched out to the sky.

 

Several years ago, when I was leading an improvisational theater workshop, we tried an experiment. Some of the people in the group said darkness was frightening. Others disagreed. So, we planned an experiment. Our next meeting would take place in a large college classroom with no windows and where we could turn off every light, even the exit signs. The darkness in the room was total.

 

Beforehand, I moved most of the chairs together, in groups, so distinct, twisting paths to the center of the room were created. People were allowed to enter almost ceremoniously, one by one, with about a minute between them. The object was, without talking or making noise, to see how hard it would be to find each other in the center of the room.

 

And we did find each other, more easily than anticipated. I entered last, to find the whole group gathered closely together. Once I arrived, I asked if we should turn on the lights. The unanimous reply was “no.” No one wanted light, or to leave.

 

Now the physically darkest time of the year is before us….

 

*Please go to the Good Men Project to read the whole post.

A Trip to Paradise: Where Do We Meet Ourselves?

What does paradise mean to us? Heaven? The garden of Eden? A place of perfection, or of beauty and wonder? The end of war? Safety and security? Justice? A political revolution? Or a moment of peace and quiet?

 

Maybe the yearning for paradise has accompanied humans ever since we came to exist? Or, more likely, since we first created art and language, and expanded our ability to think abstractly or to mentally journey into the future and past?

 

To enter some of the paleolithic art caves required crawling through tight passages or tunnels and leaving behind the sun-lit world. They were not dwelling places. In the famous cave at Lascaux, in the Dordogne area of southwestern France, there was evidence of oil lamps, rope, scaffolding, as well as sophisticated paintings. Were the ancient caves not just places to create art but temples meant to take people beyond time and into eternity? A place for performing hunting magic? An expression not only of a drive for artistic creation but for paradise?

 

One of my favorite books of the Bible, and best known generally, is Genesis, which begins, of course, with the beginning, with creation. And soon takes us to the garden of Eden.

 

Gardens have long been associated with, or used as living metaphors for, paradise. Journalist, author, and travel writer Pico Iyer’s book, The Half-Known Life: In Search of Paradise, begins with traveling to Iran, continues to North Korea, Kashmir, Ireland, Jerusalem, Ladakh, India, Japan, etc. and ends with realizing the most important journey is within himself. The New York Times comprehensively reviewed the book and recently listed it as one of the 100 notable of the year.

 

Modern Iran was once Persia, central to the Fertile Crescent where human farming and larger-scale societies might have begun, and where humans might have first left Eden. The word ‘paradise’ itself is from Persia, old Iranian, ‘paradaijah.’ The Farsi word for garden means paradise. Iran is a land of beautiful poetry and traditional architecture, as well as gardens of physical poetry pointing our eyes toward divinity. It is place of reverence for the “unseen life.”

 

Yet, today, Iyer shows us a place where the government tries to watch and record all that its people hide, think, and do, while the people try to find out what the government is hiding. One motif of the architecture is the inclusion of tiny mirrors, hints of an infinity of reflections and creations. But the mirrors, today, also might remind the people to keep a perpetual watch over their shoulders.

 

Maybe all nations have such contradictions. Iyer describes the “People’s Paradise” of North Korea as a place where people “seemed beside the point and perfection was the ruthless elimination of every imperfection.” Or I’m reminded that in the U. S., the “land of the free,” and leader of the democratic world, one of the two probable presidential candidates in the 2024 election promises to end democracy and rule as a dictator.

 

We must be careful with our yearning for paradise….

 

*To read the whole blog, please go to The Good Men Project.

Sherlock Holmes and the Case of Lies and Hate REVISED: With Disinformation, Antisemitism, and Anti-Muslim Attacks Haunting Us Now, this is a Critical Time to Speak of History

I grew up with a love of Sherlock Holmes. Millions of us have. When I was teaching a class on logic and debate to high school students, I used a book of quotes and incidents from Sherlock’s cases to study critical thinking and teach informal syllogisms. So, when I saw a review of a modern version of the detective, not written by Arthur Conan Doyle, and read about the plot, I was intrigued.

 

The author of the book is Nicholas Meyer, a contemporary scriptwriter as well as novelist. It’s called The Adventure of the Peculiar Protocols. The plot is built around actual events from the past that are still haunting the present. And with disinformation, antisemitism, and anti-Muslim attacks haunting us now, this is a critical time to speak of this history.

 

The Protocols mentioned in the title are actual rants, lies, propaganda that were first published in the nineteenth century and, unfortunately, have been reproduced even today. They are called The Protocols of the Elders of Zion.

 

The document was created to deceive people into believing Jewish leaders had come together to plot the takeover of the world. In the novel by Meyer, Sherlock is asked to find out if the plot is real and, if not, expose the lie so the truth could be revealed.

 

In truth (as well as in the novel), the Protocols were plagiarized from a work of satire called The Dialogue in Hell Between Machiavelli and Montesquieu, by a writer named Maurice Joly in 1864. It included no mention of any Jew. According to Wikipedia, Joly’s piece was an attack on Napoleon III, elected President of France who later made himself absolute ruler.

 

Joly has Montesquieu speak in support of democracy and argue that the “liberal” spirit in people was indomitable. Machiavelli argues it wouldn’t take him even 20 years to “… transform utterly the most indomitable European character and render it as docile under tyranny as the debased people of Asia.”

 

In the end of the satire, absolutism wins, and Montesquieu is consigned to remain in hell.

 

The piece would have been consigned to oblivion, except probably for Pyotr Ivanovich Rachkovsky, head of the Russian Okhrana or secret police of the Tsar Nicholas II. He commissioned a re-write, to replace the attacks on Napoleon with attacks on the Tsar. And to turn the meeting between two dead philosophers in hell to a meeting in Switzerland by Jews.

 

In the original, Machiavelli argues “Men must not scruple to use all the vile and odious deceits at their command to combat and overthrow a corrupt emperor…” Just change a few words and we get the tenth protocol, “Jews must not hesitate to employ every noxious and terrible deception at their command to fight and overturn a wicked Tsar…”

 

And there were in fact meetings by Jews in Switzerland in the nineteenth century, but they were not secret. They were Congresses called to create a Jewish state. Unlike the plot of the plagiarized and fictional Protocols, the meetings had nothing to do with overthrowing the Tsar or any other state….

 

**To read the whole article, please go to The Good Men Project.

 

I Was Going to Write an Email: To Converse with Truth, Let Silence Speak

I was going to send an email to The Good Men Project about not being able to write a blog this week. For several years, I’ve sent in a piece almost every week. If I couldn’t do so, I informed the editors in advance. This time, I tried several ideas, but none coalesced into a finished piece. And I kept imagining what I could say about why or asking myself if I needed to say anything at all.

 

I started to question any excuses that popped into my head or the need to have any excuses. I started questioning my explanations, my pattern of thinking, my distractions. And suddenly, a realization of what I could write came clear to me. What was going on inside me became clear.

 

Why am I writing blogs? Why do we ever feel a need to justify doing what we need to do, or what is right?

 

It can be so difficult to put life first. When we are not immediately and physically threatened, and I’m so thankful there are no bombs falling here instead of the rain, it can be difficult to put the reality that we can lose all we have first, that we might die.

 

Even now, with two major wars in the world, with a climate emergency ⎼ with the leader of one of the two major political parties threatening that if he becomes President again he will be a dictator. He will take away our constitutional rights, to vote, to the rule of law and to be considered innocent until proven guilty. Or to say anything in opposition to what he says, or get good healthcare or have choices about our healthcare ⎼ it’s so difficult for many of us to feel the reality of this. To believe we might die. To prioritize this. This, now.

 

We have all these things we do, layers upon layers of habits, of patterns of thinking, prioritizing, passing time. We have our normal concerns, communities of concerns. Obligations. We have all the pain, joys, and memories we live with.

 

Yet, this morning, fresh from a long sleep, I woke up questioning so much. And what before was hidden became clear. What do I really feel? What should I write? Why hadn’t I completed a blog? Do I need to explain anything to anyone about how I’ve lived life?

 

And the freshness of just waking up, and questioning, with a willingness to look, and the desire to see what’s real, all the clouds in my mind were pushed apart….

 

*To read the whole piece, please go to this link to The Good Men Project.

What Underlies Our Creativity? The Infinite and the Finite are Two Hands that Clap the World into Existence

When I was teaching secondary school, students often asked: Where does creativity come from? Does it come from me? Is it a gift we are born with? Does it arise from how we relate to our lives? Is it from the universe itself speaking?

 

In a similar way, I sometimes wonder how I can keep writing blogs. I try to write one a week, but sometimes don’t succeed and can barely say a word. I worry that I’ve run out of ideas. Other weeks, I write three or four blogs and it seems everything I see or hear has hidden treasure in it.

 

Sometimes, even if I have something to say for myself, I wonder if I have anything helpful to say to anyone else. When I was in college, and about to go out on a date, I feared I would run out of topics for conversation. Or if I had a paper to write, I wondered if I could come up with anything original or real to write about.

 

Right now, I’m looking out of my window and see the edge of the forest. At first, I see the forest, a whole grouping of trees, grass, the dried stalks of flowers⎼ all at once. Then I notice a rhododendron bush, with green leaves that shine even though it is very gray right now, and rain or snow seems about to burst from the air. Or just beyond it, the naked, old branches of a lilac ⎼ thin fingers reaching out to heaven.

 

Even in this seemingly simple setting, there is a vast universe of unrecognized details. At first, an unverbalized, un-languaged sensing, a taking everything in. Then, words arise, individual details, singular things are born, but the vision of the whole obscured.

 

To make sense of all of this, my mind utilizes patterns of thinking I’ve found useful in the past, theories about reality, memories of recent as well as distant events. Everything I have ever thought or felt is alive in this scene that stares back at me as I stare at it. But I’m only conscious of one bush, one tree, one Buddha statue covered with shades of green moss, one memory of feeling as gray as the air now looks.

 

And yet, every once and awhile, if I’m attentive⎼ if I take a moment to just breathe; to take a walk or meditate⎼ then the normal noise of rushing from one concern to the next is paused, juxtaposed against a blank screen. I get quiet enough to hear what before was hidden. Maybe feel that original, pre-language sensing. The pattern of my thoughts or assumptions pops out in my mind. And when I do read a word or hear someone speak, I have a much better chance of perceiving not only the words but the feeling and reality beyond the words.

 

Author Robert Pirsig, in Part II of his novel, Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance: An Inquiry into Ethics, talks about how, in science, the more you look, the more you see. This sounds simple until you get to his conclusions. Pirsig, speaking of his main character, says:

 

“He coined a law.… ‘The number of rational hypotheses that can explain any given phenomenon is infinite.’ It pleased him never to run out of hypotheses. Even when his experimental work seemed to dead-end in every conceivable way, he knew that if he just sat down and muddled about it long enough, sure enough, another hypothesis would come along….

 

If the purpose of scientific method is to select from among a multitude of hypotheses, and if the number of hypotheses grows faster than experimental method can handle, then it is clear that all hypotheses can never be tested. If all hypotheses cannot be tested, then the results of any experiment are inconclusive and the entire scientific method falls short of its goal of establishing proven knowledge.” “[A]s you try to move toward unchanging truth through the application of scientific method, you actually do not move toward it at all. You move away from it!”

 

Substitute logic for scientific method and a hypothesis jumps out at us. Reason and science increase our understanding. They allow humans to develop and survive. But reality far exceeds any rational thought about it—and the value of the world, of reality, far exceeds anything we can imagine, certainly exceeds any use we can imagine for any part of it…..

 

*To read the whole blog post, please click on this link to The Good Men Project.

A Primal Sort of Love, A Primal Sort of Prayer: When Our Eyes and Ears Become Heart-Shaped

We all know days when the world seems caught under a gray sky. When there’s no sun anywhere and the air itself feels like a light rain or snow. When so much feels at risk and wars rage. The world storms⎼ and then gets quiet. And aside from the sound of wind and the falling rain, all is silent.

 

And I realized that here, too, inside the house, in me, it’s gray. Not just the sky but the trees, the flowers, the furniture, the walls. Everything. The air around me and the air inside me speaks a gray language. And I stop dreading and almost welcome this new language. It becomes an “old friend.”

 

It’s too easy to forget these relationships amongst everything, this interconnection. But if we notice this, this gray outside meeting the gray inside, actually the possibility of joy increases. We better perceive what we give attention to. We open eyes, nose, ears, mouths, minds to whatever. By feeling presence, we can meet not just the world outside but inside. We care.

 

Just a few minutes after realizing this, I looked out the window at the sky. It was late afternoon, early evening. And there was some blue in the sky, just a hint, a bit of white and a space of blue emerging from behind gray clouds. Then lines of pink and the red sky of the end of day.

 

I turn and look in the room around me. A wooden chair, the oak flooring, a white lamp. On the wall is a piece of art. It’s a woodblock print we found years ago, by a Japanese artist named Kawase Hasui. The artwork is called Morning at Tsuchiura. It depicts an ancient wood boat tied to a tree on the shore of a river. And the color of water, which just a moment before looked, yes, grayish, is now more clearly and deeply several shades of blue. And the reflection of the boat in the water is so remarkable and alive. One minute gray. The next, blue. Maybe by looking and feeling so intently one moment, the next moment is deepened, too.

 

I notice this happens after concentrated exercise or meditation, as well as stopping and simply letting my gaze linger on something. The mind sharpens when we feed it with focused, mindful attention on our breath or what’s around us.

 

And something more. The patience to just look. When I’m angry, for example, or afraid, or anxious, and filled with dislike, it’s like my senses are too jumpy or too focused on some thought, or fear, worry to see the reality before me. The fear, anxiety, dislike push the physical world away to replace it with a world of thought.

 

But when we can take the time to pause, to feel⎼ when we’re not so consumed by the news or whatever, and we can possibly feel grief for the world without getting overwhelmed⎼ we can let our eyes and ears become heart shaped. And the colors, sounds, scents, the feel of everything comes closer and sharpens.

 

When we do this, when we listen to what comforts us, maybe it’s the geese calling, or the wind⎼ when we listen so deeply that we hear the movement of water, trees, grasses, and birds in it, and we hear cars and people and our own responses to all the movement in it, we have a new sensitivity….

 

*To read the whole piece, please go to the Good Men Project.

To Enjoy Life When Young, Honor What It Means to Get Older: To Value Aging Is to Value Life, To Value Ourselves, and Human Life In All Its Stages

Yesterday, I was going to a local movie theatre and a younger person held the door for me. I was surprised. I had the same questioning response when someone gave up a seat for me on a bus or called me “Sir.” I am in my mid-seventies and in apparently good physical shape. Were these gestures just politeness? Or was it an assumption or a stereotype of the physical capabilities of those with gray hair and wrinkles?

 

Or was it respect? How do people see me? Do younger people see me in any way like I see myself? Does my age make me seem dignified? Knowledgeable? Or fragile?

 

It’s difficult to believe, to really feel and acknowledge, we’re getting old or older. In my mind, like almost everyone I know who’s near my age, I’m 30 or 40 years younger than I am. Our psyche hasn’t caught up with our body. To ourselves, on the inside, we might feel young. Vibrant. But others see us from the outside.

 

We’re always aging, and we’re always aging together. So, if we don’t value all phases of life, even being old, even being sick, we cut ourselves off from ourselves and others.

 

In the 1960s, I remember the talk about not trusting anyone over thirty. As a sixteen to twenty-year-old, I couldn’t imagine being thirty, let alone sixty. Sixty was a time of frailty. I’m constantly astonished that I’m now not anything like I once imagined a person of seventy-plus years to be.

 

And it’s not because we’re boring that older people talk so frequently about their medical conditions, pains, and doctor visits. It’s partly a way of us saying, “Can you believe I’m going through this? Me?” We might suddenly feel we’re becoming the parents we’ve lost.

 

And we don’t want to waste time faking the reality of our lives. We want to speak of meaningful things. We want to share and feel in sync with others. And one thing most of us share is pain and wanting to know how to deal with it. How to deal with life and face change and dying.

 

As we get older, we realize the deep meaning of change and impermanence, but it’s a difficult lesson and can be hard to accept. After a heart procedure, I was told I had to temporarily stop intense or long periods of exercise. So, I did. I cut back drastically, taking only moderate walks on flatter ground. That lasted one day. Then I started counting steps again, or imagining long walks up steep hills and the views I could get. Or imagining exercises I could do.

 

Imagining I could die from exercise (or at all) was just too difficult. I mean, I could feel all this life around me⎼ the crickets, birds, wind, friends⎼ things, and places I enjoy. I mean, consciousness, except for when sleep (and somewhat even then), has always been there; luckily, no pain or illness has dimmed it for me. Slowed, maybe. But how do we imagine it ceasing, permanently?

 

We all need to learn, and schools to teach, the psychology of human development and aging. Larger public schools especially are islands of youth and as such are highly artificial and developmentally problematical. Children need to be around people of various ages, who can serve as models and provide care and support. It’s so easy for them, or anyone, when so isolated from other age groups to over-value youth, the example of their peers, and of what’s new and popular. And we can carry this isolation over to our later years….

 

*To read the whole piece, please go to The Good Men Project.