Elders

Doug von Koss, whom I know from the Minnesota Men's Conference as teacher, choral director and, yes, elder -- is asking some probing questions about the latter. What is an "elder?" Why do we need these people around? What do we want from them?

An elder is someone old enough to recall when it was politically correct to be a "senior citizen," when the only elder species about was the elderberry. An elder remembers that we have abandoned "seniors" in favor of the more elevated "elders" -- and knows that if he can last another decade or so, some new term will supplant "elders." In other words, an elder takes the long view. An elder senses that certain things are of enduring importance and others are not. An elder knows that much of what we are told is important, in fact, isn't. An elder has his eye on the big picture.

Last night my wife and I sat in a frenzied, oversized brasserie just up from Times Square and around the corner from Lehman Brothers. Being on the brink of elderhood myself, I was struck by how is to be a twentysomething or thirtysomething in our society. Young people are, as I was, essentially rudderless. The powerful forces around them, such as New York's big midtown brokerage firms, hold sway over their lives and point them in certain directions. These days Lehman Brothers' high-rise on 7th Ave displays its name in an endless sweep of letters five stories high that crawl across the lower part of the building like a cable news feed. Gauche, witless and in-your-face American. Wouldn't a normal person be self-conscious working in such a place?

More to the point, wouldn't a normal person find it odd that at 10:30 p.m. there is a line of black town cars, more than a block long, waiting to pick up brokers, financial analysts and whoever else is working at that hour? Presumably workers are being driven home. But who knows? Maybe there's one last meeting.

So, there they were, in this 52nd St brasserie, eating, talking, trying to pick each other up, and generally being young. For someone who is 60, more than half paralyzed and sitting opposite a wife who is only somewhat younger and very grateful to be alive and enjoying New York after a year-long bout with colon cancer, all these young professionals seemed removed from life. Were they running from it? Was I running at their age? What do young people run from in the midst of their carousing?

They run from what elders know. Elders know that whether or not life is long, it has an arc. Something completes itself. And life is not just one life, but a lifecycle. Elders are people who show us, without trying, what naturally endures in a person who has lived well. Elders give us courage. Bond prices may tumble. Rome may fall. But people can still sell stuff, and there will always be Romans as long as there are Vespas.

Elders are people who know they soon will lose life -- and, so, naturally give it to those around them.