Two Old Men

Old friends, old friends

Sat on their park bench like bookends

A newspaper blown through the grass

Falls on the round toes

Of the high shoes of the old friends

 

Old friends, winter companions, the old men

Lost in their overcoats, waiting for the sunset

The sounds of the city sifting through trees

Settle like dust on the shoulders of the old friends

 

Can you imagine us years from today

Sharing a park bench quietly?

How terribly strange to be 70

 

Old friends, memory brushes the same years

Silently sharing the same fears

(Old Friends, Paul Simon, 1968)

 

 

They aren’t friends . . . the two old men.  In fact, I don’t think either one of them gives a hoot about the other one.  They are on different ends of the spectrum . . . more like opponents . . . enemies, these two old men.  They don’t like each other, nor do they respect each other. Yet they are cast in the drama we are all stuck in.  But they are old.  They are male . . . men.  And we are stuck with them.  They are not friends.

 

Paul Simon’s hauntingly simple song, Old Friends, has always struck a heart chord since I was a young teen.  The visual imagery it evokes has always left an impression on me.  Back then I couldn’t even begin to imagine what it would be like to be seventy.  Shoot!  I couldn’t even picture myself making it to twenty-one.  Yet here I am . . . pushing the years ever closer to seventy.  Nor could I see myself on a park bench with a friend.  Then and now . . . you’ve got to have friends.  The song has always stirred melancholy within me.

 

This isn’t about me.  No, its about the two old men invading our lives and throwing us all into a state of anxiousness.  The two old men.  The younger of the two will be seventy-eight years old in less than a week.  The other is inching his way to eighty-one come the fall.  Neither one is a spring chicken.  They are old . . . elderly . . . geriatric . . . majorly senior citizens . . . mature . . . OLD!!  Not only are they old, but they are also our choices to lead our nation in the upcoming fall election.

 

Yes . . . two old men.

 

In a magazine article I recently read, major world leaders shared their views about the presidential race in our country.  Mostly they expressed disbelief.  Disbelief that in a nation of over 340 million people that these two old men were the best candidates chosen to run.  This international disbelief is probably the echo coming from our own populace.  You know, really . . . two old men?  This is the best we could do?

 

I’m not even that old and I can’t picture myself vying for the supposedly most powerful leadership position in the world.  These two guys have well over a decade of mileage on me and at my age I can already see and feel the wear-and-tear.  Being old ain’t easy.  It’s a daily adventure to just survive.  I’m old.  Ask my children and grandchildren.  They will tell you that I’m old and constantly remind me of that fact.  Even my co-workers at my university job are checking up on me to see if I have a pulse.

 

In my more mature age, I know that I do not have the physical stamina I once had.  I get tired more easily.  I long for naps.  An early bedtime is looked forward to.  Takes me a little longer to get from Point “A” to Point “B”—and even thinking about it winds me.  My balance ain’t what it used to be.  I trip more often even though I suspect Mother Earth is reaching up and tripping me.  Biffing is quite common.  Physically I am older.  I am unable to defy entropy.  I’m slowly falling apart . . . fading away.  These guys have a lot more years on their bodies—and it shows—yet they want to be president?  Come on . . . they are two old men!

 

I am also losing my mind.  At least that is how my wife, children, grandchildren, and co-workers describe it.  Actually, I’m just more forgetful.  I don’t remember things as easily as I used to.  I must write things down . . . leave myself notes . . . provide myself clues and reminders.  That comes with aging.  So does the gift of repeating.  As I have gotten older, I catch myself telling the same stories and jokes . . . over and over.  It comes with age whether it makes everyone else in the room roll their eyes and audibly groan.  I recognized this in my advanced age.  I ain’t as sharp as I once was.  And boy, do I see that trait in these two old guys.

 

One speaks like a kindergartner on a sugar high barely able to get two coherent words out in a sentence.  At times he sounds like a “touched by the Spirit” loose tongue evangelical experiencing a divine moment of ecstasy.  Can’t make out a word that he is saying but he sure is enthusiastic about what he is saying.  Maybe God understands him, the people sure can’t.  Some say, due to his age, that he has dementia.

 

The old guy isn’t much better.  He has difficulty speaking too.  People blame it on his age and stamina.  Someone jokingly suggested that he turn the teleprompter towards the audience and let them read the speech for themselves . . . that it would be faster and make more sense.  Some say he is in the same boat as the other younger old guy and is in the early stages of dementia.  I’ve often wondered if he hasn’t had a series of mini-strokes or TBIs.

 

Neither one will go down in history as great orators . . . probably not even “okay” as public speakers.  They are old.  What do we expect?  They are two old men.

 

Research shows that cognitive decline begins around the age of seventy and increases in deterioration closer to the age of eighty.  Explains a lot.  These two old guys are there age-wise . . . they are old!  I think I have been slipping downhill once I hit sixty-five.  Some days it feels as if I am running down that hill.  These two have got to feel like they are in free fall from an airplane without a parachute.  They are going to end up as a great big splat before it is all over.

 

And, that my friends, is my fear.  The source of my anxiety.  They are two old men . . . running for president.  They shouldn’t be.  No, they should be sitting on a park bench.  Basking in the warmth of the sun.  Enjoying God’s handiwork.  Remembering.  Reminiscing about the good old days, family, and friends.  Counting their blessings for a life well lived . . . after all, they made it—they are old.  Let someone younger run for president.  They’ve got the fortitude, capacity, and stamina to do the job.  Give them a chance.  Let the old guys rest.

 

Two old men.

 

I doubt that they will ever sit on a park bench like bookends.  I doubt that they will ever be friends.  They won’t be companions.  Yet here they are . . . two old men. Two old men stirring the same fears in all of us.

 

Is this the best we could do?

 

Two old men.

 

Hats . . . Is it You?

During my undergraduate studies I had an Educational Psychology professor who was well-loved by the students despite being hokey.  He claimed that hokiness from being raised on a Kansas.  His theme song for his childhood was John Denver’s song, Matthew:

 

Yes, and joy was just the thing he was raised on

Love is just the way to live and die

Gold is just a windy Kansas wheat field

And blue is just a Kansas summer sky

 

That, said Paul Welter, was the foundation of his life.

 

One of Welter’s most popular lectures was on the “hats” people wear.  He would state we all wear “hats” that we constantly change depending on the situations we are in and the people that we are with.  In those cases, we wear the hat that fits.  I suppose the point was that as individuals we are fluid. Fluid in the sense that we have many different roles and identities that make us who we are.  That we play roles.  He would go through the lecture and then drop the “big” question—which hat is really you?

 

That is a “big” question and even in my “golden years”, I’m not sure I can answer that question any more definitively than I could back then when he first posed the question.  The fact is that life is a journey and none of us are where we started—at least I hope not.  We have all grown . . . changed . . . evolved.  That is the goal of life.  To discover who we were created to be and then become the best “me” we can be.  That’s a journey . . . a trip.  For me, quoting the Grateful Dead, “What a long, strange trip it has been.”

 

Everything on our journey pieces together to make us who we are.  The words we hear spoken.  The people we encounter.  The music we listen to.  The spirituality we explore, embrace, and leave behind.  The movies we watch.  The books we read.  The politics we embrace and rail against.  The religions we explore.  The education we seek.  The relatives we encounter, idolized, ignored, and despised.  The cultures in which we live and lived.  The ethnocentricities around us.  The landscape we grew up in and live in.  The peace and the war.  The tension and the calm.  Everything pieces together like some cosmic puzzle to mold and shape us into who we are . . . and it is a journey.

 

It is a journey of a million, billion steps and decisions with each discovery we encounter.  Robert Frost equates it to being a journey through the woods upon which he comes to a fork in the road.  At that point a choice must be made . . . a decision made.  That is life—constant choices . . . constant decisions.  In that the difference is made proclaims Frost.  The wise old Yankee, Yogi Berra, said that when you come to a fork in the road, take it.  That is life—a journey of discovery.

 

Now it may look and feel like there has been a map that laid the journey before us, but reality and experience tell us differently.  We may think it is all pre-ordained by God . . . that God has it all planned out, step-by-step, but it is not!  Nope.  God leaves that up to us knowing that we are going somewhere.  Somewhere that is up to us . . . that is closer to being who we are.  God believes in us.  Maybe we should too.

 

The choices and decisions are up to us.  We pick and choose.  But with which “hat” do we do this picking and choosing?  Trust me, the “hats” influence us.  They truly do.

 

The goal of my journey has always been to be who I was created to be.  To be perfect in who I am.  Of course, in popular faith stances—Christianity in particular—that is practically a blasphemous statement.  Only Christ was perfect.  Yet that is what Jesus calls us to be—ourselves.  In being ourselves with all our strengths and weaknesses, good and bad points . . . who we are. And then accepting ourselves as we are.  If we can master that, we can master perfection.  Didn’t William Shakespeare say, “This above all: to thine own self be true . . .”

 

That is the goal.  It begins with us.  Discovering who we are.  Learning to love ourselves—all of who we are.  We begin there.  If we cannot love ourselves, then how can we ever love another?

 

That is the problem in my estimation, with the world today.  It doesn’t seem as if too many people love themselves.  Just take a gander at the world we live in—watch the news on television, listen to the radio, read the newspapers, cruise the Internet and social media.  Sure doesn’t seem like a warm cozy place we are living in.  No, far from it.  People need to learn how to love themselves so that they love others.

 

Which means we need to make the journey.  As we make the journey we need to realize that it is a “long strange trip” with lots of forks in the road calling for choices and decisions.  Choices weighed upon discernment and for no better word—prayer.  We need to weigh the voices and experiences of the past as they pull and push us.  Discern the “truth
 as we know and understand it.  Someone once said that the “truth will set you free.”

 

Self-discovery. Self-love.  It all leads to how we love ourselves and love others.  Anything less is to pay a heavy price.  This I have learned through the years.  It is a heavy price.  It could cost us our souls.

 

As individuals and as a group we must figure out which “hat” truly represents us . . . that says who we are.  I am still working towards discovering that “hat” that says “me”.  Still wading through them all, but I can honestly state that I have fewer hats than I used to have.  I am getting closer.  I guess I always knew what Dr. Welter was getting at, but I just wasn’t ready to give up my “hats”.  They were comfortable.  But life is not always about being comfortable . . . sometimes it is about wearing something new, different, and real.  They say that hindsight is 20/20!  “Love is just a way to live and die.”  That’s a hat I think we could all wear.

 

How’s your hat collection?