MATURITY IS A VIRTUE | 2005-12-13
I keep talking about Ole Bob and what an old man I am. This is a brag.
Since the group that calls itself The Greatest Generation took over, everybody wants to be young.
I think this started with the fact that The Greatest Generation did its bit by the time it was twenty years old and has been living on it ever since.
In earlier days maturity was what people valued. I value it and I tell younger people that I value it. A lot of young people today seem to find my attitude a relief.
I do not tell young people that I am "one of you." What use would that be? They are surrounded by OTHER young people.
For decades older people have insisted that they are really young at heart.
The reason an older person tries to convince young folks that he is one of them is not to to prove something to them. He is trying to prove something to HIMSELF.
Which is pathetic.
These people are telling young people that they cannot deal with the fact that they are older now. They want to prove they are still young.
I don't think there is a lot of useful wisdom in that.
I remember the 1960s when the World War II generation media commentators were glorying in the leftist hippies. They kept insisting that the young hippies were just like them
They were trying to prove something. They were trying to prove that they were still young idealists just like the Peace Generation and the Flower Children.
I kept wondering what the point was for a middle-aged man trying to show he was till young.
If you're just like them, I thought, who needs you? What have you got to say that anybody needs to hear if the REAL young people are already saying it??
But those pathetic members of The Greatest Generation were not interested in being needed or useful, they were trying to prove to THEMSELVES that they were still young.
So how did they look to me?
I cannot get away from using the word that springs to mind: Pathetic.
Before the Pathetic... sorry I mean The Greatest Generation, what an old guy had to offer was not that he could play hopscotch better than the kids could.
What a mature person can offer young people is that he WAS young, and I remember my youth vividly. But the whole point of younger people listening to me that is important is that I am now where THEY will be someday.
I am not a fellow kid. My advice is about what a former kid should become.
No way a kid should grow up to be ME. But I can offer some perspective they can use as they mature.
I let them know up front I am not a fellow kid or an Olympic Hopscotcher.
When talking to young people my usual intro is, "When I was young I walked twenty miles to school in the snow..."
They can always finish it with, "Against the wind, right? And uphill both ways, right?"
Methinks they've heard it before.
But they seem to enjoy hearing it again from someone who is old and proud of it. They know exactly what is behind the joke: I'm the old guy.
Or, more to the point, I'm the man who is already where you are going to be.
A society needs adults. Our youth-obsessed society needs adults more than most.
I spent a lot of years getting to be my age and learning what I have learned.
I plan to enjoy it.
And I am determined to share it.