Perceptive History Books

“Wisdom is with the aged, and understanding in length of days.” Job 12:12

I’ve been thinking a lot about old age. Specifically, I’ve been considering the old men and women— maybe relatives, family friends, or church members— who we all have in our lives. In my cosy valley in Vermont, I had the blessing of growing up next door to my grandfather for the first eighteen years of my life. He was close enough to be over almost every day, but absent enough for our hearts to stay fond. Now that I’m living away from home, I realize how much of a blessing this situation was. Too often, the elderly people in our lives are ignored, pushed off to the side and marked as irrelevant. Youth my age are especially guilty of this, and the idea could not be more wrong. We should value the elderly for three reasons: our seniors give us context for where we have been, our elders have a unique insight into life as it is, and our grandfathers have stories to tell.

The first reason we should value the elderly is that they give us context for where we have been. George Santayana is probably best known for penning that pithy truth, “Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.” We can study history to gain that understanding, but nothing can take the place of living through the actual events themselves. Gifted with immediate first-hand understanding and long lives spent building connections, these men and women can’t help but see the continuous threads which pervade history. When we spend time with these people, we learn about a world which was and which still is. In a world where technology is outdated minutes after being unboxed and pop stars blink in and out of the consciousness of the public like fireflies, we need the voices of the elderly to remind us, as Solomon told his sons, “What has been will be again, what has been done will be done again; there is nothing new under the sun.”

The second reason we should value the elderly is that they have a unique insight into life as it is. Because of the context of where they have been, or rather, when they have been, these men and women have seen things we have not seen and experienced things we may never experience. The men who lived through the “Great War” saw what was happening thirty years later when Germany rose again to power. After the unfaithful scouts came back to Moses in the desert, God sent the Israelites to wander for another forty years to ensure that a new generation would be the first to enter the promised land. The older ones among us can see how the world changes or stays the same through all sorts of trials, informing their wisdom and knowledge.

The third reason we should value the elderly is that they have stories to tell. If there is any one thing that grandparents seem to have in common, it’s the way they all have an abundance of stories. Considering the long lives lived by each old man and woman, it’s no wonder that they seem to be walking storybooks. We go through life making choices, good, bad, and so many in between, and we reap the consequences from them. Our grandparents, our old friends, and the men and women from history all serve as individual studies for lives full of choices. We don’t have to explore every option in life to find the consequences; we can simply look to the past. From introduction to climax to conclusion, every conflict under the sun has been mapped out in the lives of the people who have come before us, and most immediately by men and women we all know in our lives. We should take advantage of that.

The elderly people among us are important. Without these people, we would be forced to stumble through life without any guidance. We should value them for their context, for their insight, and for their stories which prove relevant time after time. I miss my grandpa. I miss his laugh, his cheerful whistle, and his fun stories about his life growing up. He’s lived almost four times as long as I have, and the lessons he has learned are invaluable. While I love my fellowship of teenagers, I miss the wisdom that comes with the elderly. I need to find some surrogate grandparents to complement my newfound family.

Au revoir, 
Barnabas