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“Something Good” – Wendell Berry and Remembering When We Made a Difference

Nothing comes from nothing
Nothing ever could
So somewhere in my youth or childhood
I must have done something good. (from “Something Good,” The Sound of Music)

Last week, I wrote about the regrets that we all have about our pasts and wondered about the best way to handle them in our old age.  Reading Wendell Berry’s new book, Marce Catlett: The Force of a Story, made me think about the “good” things from the past.  If you’re like me, you spend much more time with your shames and regrets than you do with “worthy” acts.  What things in our lives have been for the good, what experiences have we had and stories have we told that made a positive difference, which resulted in “something good”?  The fortunate among us have had an old friend, student, or co-worker thank us years later for something we did not even remember doing for them or for kind words that we can’t even recall at all.  It would probably do us all good to dwell more often on the positive aspects of our lives and less often on our (numerous) regrets.

Berry’s book is narrated by Andy, the very elderly grandson of Marce Catlett.  Long ago, Marc stood up to the Duke Tobacco interests by sharing his experience with his neighbors.  His oft-repeated story of one day, told over and over, shaped the lives of all those around him in the wonderful world of Port William.  The day was devastating, but the main part of the story is about how Marce immediately picked up and carried on and worked with fellow farmers so that such a day would never happen to them again.

First, let me say that Wendell Berry just published this book at the age of 91, and it is a true gift for all of us.  Marce Catlett  is a spare book written with a sledgehammer, and not just a story about 1917.  Berry has a pretty good idea about not only what is wrong in Washington these days, but what is wrong with all of us.  And our children.    The novel can be read in a day, but it would take much longer than a day to forget it – and so it was with Marce Catlett’s story about coming home from a tobacco auction with less money in his pocket than it had taken him to grow the crop.

Wendell Berry is a wonderful writer about wonderful things; many of us know his poetry (think of “The Peace of Wild Things” or “How to be A Poet).   We also have read his essays, which go back to the 1960s and include gems like “Living in the Presence of Fear” and “Why I’m Not Going to Buy a Computer.”  But it is his fiction – the novels and stories of Port William – that future generations will look back on for a prophetic voice that was seldom heeded.  Marce Catlett is simply the culmination of this story.  You do not have to have read any of the others to appreciate this latest (but hopefully not last) work though; Berry fills us in.  I was greatly disappointed not to find it listed in this week’s NYTimes Book Review as among the best of 2025; they are wrong.  It is probably the very best of 2025.  And relevant to us elders – written by an elder, narrated by a very old man, and insistently recalling the valuable parts of a world gone by.

And I might add one more thing here.  In Wendell Berry and Marilynne Robinson we have two writers who give us alternative views (alternative to both evangelical and mainstream religion) of the place of Christianity in human life.  For those of us whose symbols, music, and history are steeped in the Christian faith, such alternatives are much needed and hard to come by.  I don’t know if this will be Berry’s last novel, but it is precious cargo, nevertheless.

Almost all of Berry’s fiction – like most of Faulkner’s – takes place in a well-defined place and gives priority to the work that is done in that place.  Like the descriptions of whaling in Moby-Dick, which ground us in the real and creates a community among the participants, in Berry’s latest book we get the details of raising a certain kind of tobacco.  We all spent much of our lives working – often in jobs that do not even exist anymore. Berry reminds us that the work was real. The lives were real.  At one point he catalogues the buildings and equipment on the old farms and says he is not writing a requiem for all that, but for “the way that once lived among them, the paths worn and wearing day by day, which connected them to one man’s effort and desire” (145).  This tribute to a careful kind of farming stands alongside a description of a careful kind of living that we don’t encounter very often these days.  It also reminds us that the memory of the old – for instance, about how to grow a crop or prepare a recipe – used to be greatly valued.  Now we are more likely to go to AI than Grandpa for such knowledge.

The book is also a diatribe against greed.  “Greed has passed to and fro over the whole earth, reducing life to matter and matter to price.  Though time and change bring sorrow, they belong to the seasons, to fecundity and health, and greed is a mortal disease” (150).  Indeed.  My guess is that was the reason Wendall Berry penned another book in his ninetieth year was to make precisely this point in a world that is sacrificing everything to… greed.

In the end, Andy comes “at last to see his grandfather Catlett, his father, and himself as three aged brothers.”  In his own old age, he now understands their old age.  I often think of my grandparents in this regard and wish I had appreciated them more.  They too had their stories of survival that come back to me – like the one about how, during the Depression, they rented out their house and lived in a neighbor’s garret in order to realize some desperately needed marginal income.  They laughed when they told the tale; they were proud that they had found a way to get through.  I see lessons there that I did not see when I was younger – including a lesson from the laughter.

I was very disappointed that Berry’s new book was not included in the NYTimes notable books for 2025, but there is a poem by Wendell Berry (“The Loved Ones”) in a recent New Yorker.  And, if you like Marce Catlett, there is reading for the rest of your lifetime in the stories of the people of Port William.  These books will change you.  They will inspire you.  And, hopefully, they will nudge you to recall the stories of your life that made a positive difference.  You “must have done something good.”  Yes.

In relation to old age, I would also particularly recommend Berry’s short stories “Fidelity” and “The Inheritors.”  The first is about the end of the life of one man and the effect on those who loved him.  It will get you thinking about technology and death and community.  The other is a portrait of an active man entering into the diminishments of old age and yet keeping his spirit whole.  Read them. 

An Old Lady’s Take on the True Danger of AI

Sunday’s NYTimes was full of articles about the economic danger of the AI bubble, and I am sure that it is a possible economic hazard for the companies involved. But I am much more concerned with the moral hazard, the risk that will be passed on to others, to us.  I think the danger is substantial, and so let me unpack it a little.

Every time I think about why AI scares me, I end up pondering what it means to be human. Human beings have always been greatly invested in proving that we are more than animals (think Scopes trial). The Bible spends a lot of time making sure we know we are in charge – and a step above the animals.  This of course has blessed us in using animals any way we wish. But, is there really such a difference between us and the animals?  Or is it just a great chain of being with a slight dotted line between man and apes?

Aristotle says that the difference is that humans are rational.  But surely AI is more rational than we are!  Descartes said that animals are akin to automatons or robots – merely mechanical, but that humans had souls.  Does the computer have a soul?  How would we know?  Another commonly repeated differentiation between men and animal is that animals adapt to their environments or die, while human beings are capable of changing their environment.  But, these days, it looks like changing our environment might be killing us, so maybe it all comes to the same thing. Maybe all we can say about all of this is that human beings need to feel special, we need to feel superior to animals, and we really haven’t worked out our relationship to a really smart machine.

The further I explored this issue, the more I intuited that the true danger of AI was the loss of any sense of worth or efficacy that we could do things ourselves.  I could, for example, have AI write my blogs.  I could just give AI a topic and set it loose. You might not even notice the difference.  You might even think that my writing has improved. But.  I would have abandoned the maintenance of a discipline, a sense of self-worth, a lifeline of true connection with those who read it.  And so it is with other things in our lives.  I play Bach rather badly, but I continue doing it, although I could listen Glenn Gould’s magic through my earphones. My husband and I still do almost all our cooking from scratch, including bread and desserts.  Not long ago, my son told me that he couldn’t imagine spending the time that we spend planning, shopping for, cooking, and cleaning up after meals, as if those were worthless things that should be discarded as soon as possible.  Surely the project of feeding ourselves could be outsourced in some way?  Yes, we could order takeout or go out to eat.  We would save time, perhaps, and some mental energy (but not money).   What would we replace those hours with?  Word games, news feeds, slick TV comedies and soapy dramas?  No thank you.  I understand that people will succumb.  I sometimes succumb, and, as I grow older, I may yet totally capitulate.  But it is not just about self-esteem and good home cooking.  It is about a sense of discipline. A sense of being in control of our selves – could this be what is meant by soul?

Let me just begin by saying that we have allowed discipline to become a bad word.  Michael Foucault and other modern thinkers helped in this regard, with the emphasis on discipline from without rather than Benjamin Franklin’s stress on self-discipline.  Discipline used to be valued, prized.  Discipline used to be seen as a way of living a better life.  Monasteries had disciplines, so did the Methodist Church.  Jesus had disciples.  Buddhism has a discipline called the Vinaya.  I never made much of my life until I learned a certain level of discipline, and I am sure most of us would say the same.

It is always hard to explain to younger folks that we study some things not in order to learn them, but to learn discipline.  I have never used calculus in my adult life, but I learned a lot about logic and determination by studying it when I was young.  I am currently studying French – not because Google Translate can’t meet all of my meager translation needs, but because the study itself keeps my mind active and teaches me something about the very nature of words and language.  Similarly, I write a blog not just for my readers (although I thoroughly appreciate you!), but for the discipline of having to read and think a little more deeply.  The process forces me to actually sit at my computer a few times a month to organize my thoughts.

Sloth and torpor are sins in most religions.  We might be reminded that we have given animals we eat a life of sloth and torpor – we feed them, house them, make all their decisions for them.  And then we see a picture of someone who has “liberated” a cow or pig and it is cavorting in the pasture.  Do we think it misses its sense of security? Do we think it preferred to have us doing its thinking for it?  “Taking care” of it?

AI wants to take our work, particularly our mental work, away from us.  For some, it is taking real work away.  We already have two middle-aged adults in our family who have lost jobs in which it is very likely that they will be replaced by some version of AI.  And such losses have only begun – why would businesses invest big money in AI if they don’t anticipate that it will save them money elsewhere (salaries)?

This is not the first time that our generation has seen technology replace our work. We went to school in the days of blue book exams and math without a calculator (except for the trusty slide rule).  But then things started to change rapidly, and my generation accepted those changes willingly.  I remember when dishwashers became common, and when I used my first garage door opener.  So much of the work-replacement seemed common sense – we didn’t even think about it.  Who wouldn’t want to replace the drudgery of cloth diapers with disposable ones?  But now we need to think, and thinking is exactly what AI is trying to take away from us.  It wants to program our reading and listening (it knows what we like!) and rescue us from the messy business of… living.

I am as lazy as the next person.  I know that, and I know it is a problem.  Much of the meaning of my life involves fighting inertia.  I used to be my own worst enemy, but now I think I’ve got a more formidable one.

I do not think that the danger is that AI will get rid of pesky humans; I think that we will become less human all on our own.  I will fight my personal battle on this, but it will take all the discipline I have – discipline I learned doing calc by hand and hanging cloth diapers on the line.

One of my favorite stories about technology is Ray Bradbury’s “There Will Come Soft Rains.”  He got his title from Sara Teasdale’s poem (also relevant), “There Will Come Soft Rains (War Time).”   And, Happy Thanksgiving!  For all my old lady grumbling, I am exceedingly grateful for my life and my loyal readers.  And this message was not brought to you by AI!

“Remember, You Must Die”

In Muriel Spark’s comic/tragic novel Memento Mori, old folks keep getting strange phone calls telling them nothing more than “Remember, you must die!”  The elders, rich and poor, male and female, are alarmed by the unwanted reminder and even recruit a detective to try to track down the culprit.  But the voices on the phone vary, and one of the characters decides that it must be Death that is calling them.  One might wonder why old folks would find such “news” upsetting.

In much earlier times, death was so common that people needed few reminders.  Buddhism recommends meditating on one’s own death daily, and monks often went to charnel houses to do so.  In the West, memento mori were common.  Paintings often included skulls and household objects were crafted to look like coffins.  It was considered good to be reminded of how brief and miraculous our being was.  In his “Thoughts for the Times on War and Death,” Freud intimated that people lived more authentic lives in times of war when the specter of death was always present, hard to ignore.  These days, the specter and certainty of death have surely receded. Silicon Valley is not even convinced that it is inevitable – they are “solving death.”  If Freud is right that acceptance of death makes a more authentic life, one might worry.

Lately I was reminded that we ourselves, we elders, are a kind of unappreciated memento mori for younger folk.  I was at a wedding last weekend, and surely was one of the four or five oldest persons there.  I thought again of Larkin’s poem “The Old Fools,” which he wrote when he was about 50, and begins as the poet looks at some of the elders around him:

What do they think has happened, the old fools,

To make them like this? Do they somehow suppose

It’s more grown-up when your mouth hangs open and drools,

And you keep on pissing yourself, and can’t remember

Who called this morning? Or that, if they only chose,

They could alter things back to when they danced all night,

Or went to their wedding, or sloped arms some September?

Or do they fancy there’s really been no change,

And they’ve always behaved as if they were crippled or tight,

Or sat through days of thin continuous dreaming

Watching the light move? If they don’t (and they can’t), it’s strange;

Why aren’t they screaming?

We are the memento mori now.  But are the young folks more afraid of death or of getting old? When Gulliver meets, in his Travels, the Struldbruggs – who age and age but are immortal – he sees them as a way of reconciling himself to death.  Gulliver swears that “no Tyrant could invent a Death into which I would not run with Pleasure from such a life [that of a Struldbrugg].” Gulliver decides that this amelioration of the mortal fear of death (which is far preferable to aging) is the only possible use for the immortals, and he considers bringing some specimens home with him “to arm our People against the Fear of Death.”

And why aren’t we “screaming”?  Well, some of us are as we run around cramming in travel and surgeries and whatever it takes to stop the reminders of our aging, but most of us accept it.  Some of us even like it.  In a way, our own bodies remind us that we are not going to last forever as bits and pieces wither, are surgically removed, or metamorphose into something we hardly recognize.  So, most of us have death on our horizon. I keep the memorial cards from loved ones who have passed away around the house where I can see their pictures daily and remember those who have passed ahead of me.  There is an old cemetery on my regular walking route, and one of the common headstone inscriptions is: “As you are now so once was I, as I am now so shall you be. Remember me as you pass by, prepare for death and follow me.”  Indeed.

Additionally, we have learned something in the process of getting older.  “Do they fancy there’s really been no change?” asks Philip Larkin sarcastically.  No, we know about the physical changes, but we also know that there is something that does not change very much at all. Don’t ask me to define it, but it is still there.  We aren’t screaming – not because we are looking forward to death – but because many of us have reconciled ourselves to it.  And, as Freud posited, we are better off for it.

I would note that one of Larkin’s very last poems, “Aubade,” is about the fear of death:

And so it [death] stays just on the edge of vision,

A small unfocused blur, a standing chill

That slows each impulse down to indecision.

Most things may never happen: this one will,

And realisation of it rages out

In furnace-fear when we are caught without

People or drink. Courage is no good:

It means not scaring others. Being brave

Lets no one off the grave.

Death is no different whined at than withstood.

Poor Philip!  I would contrast his fear with Stevie Smith’s poem “Black March” about her welcoming relationship with death or Maya Angelou’s wonderful “On Aging.”

For one of my short stories about approaches to death, you might try “A Perfect Ending.”  Other blogs on this subject include “Memento Mori” and “The Purpose of Old Age.”  Jorge Borges wrote a story (“August 25, 1983”) imagining his own death, which I tried to emulate in my story “May 12, 2036.” It makes death very concrete when you pick a date!  Try it!

Or you might try Chapter 10 in Book III of Gulliver’s Travels.

Why Are We Avoiding Paradise?

This past weekend was full of endings and beginnings.  Friday was Halloween, which – of course – marks the end of my favorite month, but is also the Eve of All Saints Day, when we remember the saintly dead.  That is followed by All Souls Day, when we remember all the dead. And, of course, it was the beginning of a new month, and the time when we turned back the clocks.  A propitious time for self-reflection.  November is the time of year which corresponds (metaphorically) with my age.  I have a few challenges ahead of me in the next few weeks, but both the young trick-or-treating ghouls and the thoughts of lost souls remind me of how good it is to be alive.  We somehow left Paradise behind as we grew up; can we regain it in old age?

That we are already in Paradise is something that is hard to comprehend and easy to forget.  I think often of the words of Joko Beck in her wonderful Everyday Zen (where she seems to talk directly to John Milton!):

There is no paradise lost, none to be regained.  Why?  Because you cannot avoid this moment.  You may not be awake to it, but it is always here.  You cannot avoid paradise.  You can only avoid seeing it.

You cannot avoid paradise.  You can only avoid seeing it.   Can it be true that the pathetic work of our long lives has been to hold paradise at bay?

Did we have paradise once and lose it?  Or did we just push it into a corner and place a fierce angel to guard the gates?  James Baldwin is much taken with such thoughts of paradise.

Perhaps everybody has a garden of Eden.  I don’t know; but they have scarcely seen their garden before they see the flaming sword.  Then, perhaps, life only offers the choice of remembering the garden or forgetting it.  Either, or: it takes strength to remember, it takes another kind of strength to forget, it takes a hero to do both. (Giovanni’s Room)

Wordsworth is sure that, as infants, we brought paradise (trailing clouds of glory) into the world with us, but lost it, forgot it, along the way:

There was a time when meadow, grove, and stream,
The earth, and every common sight,
To me did seem
Apparelled in celestial light,
The glory and the freshness of a dream.
It is not now as it hath been of yore;—

But why should we forget?  From “The Old Fools” by Philip Larkin, one of the most miserable and cynical poems about old age there is, comes this remarkable passage:

At death you break up: the bits that were you
Start speeding away from each other for ever
With no one to see. It’s only oblivion, true:
We had it before, but then it was going to end,
And was all the time merging with a unique endeavour
To bring to bloom the million-petalled flower
Of being here.

“The million-petalled flower of being here.”  If that is not paradise, if just the possibilities and potentialities of “being here” is not paradise, I do not know what is. And yet, I forget.  We all forget.  As Frederick Buechner puts it, we allow “Too good not be true” to turn into “too good to be true.”  In other words, paradise is all around us; we ourselves have put up the barriers, the angels with their shining swords are hired by us and paid a monthly wage to stop us from going back to where we belong.  Is that it? 

Beck implies that being old, being closer to death, should help us along with this process, if we let it.

When people know their death is very close, what is the element that often disappears?  What disappears is the hope that life will turn out the way they want it to.  Then they can see that the strawberry is “so delicious” [even though there is a tiger below] – because that’s all there is, this very moment.

No one but we, ourselves, can dismiss the flaming swords. It is our paradise to take or to leave. No teacher needed, no secret key.  Here is some more advice from Joko Beck:

I’ll tell you how far I’d walk to see a new teacher: maybe across the room, no farther! It isn’t because I have no interest in this person; it’s just that there is no one who can tell me about my life except—who? There is no authority outside of my experience. There is only one teacher. What is that teacher? Life itself. And of course each one of us is a manifestation of life; we couldn’t be anything else. Now life happens to be both a severe and an endlessly kind teacher. It’s the only authority that you need to trust. And this teacher, this authority, is everywhere.

Old people have seen a lot of life.  If there is one thing that we have, it is experience.  We need to trust ourselves, dismiss the shining swords, and enter the paradise that is ours by right.  What are the odds that we would even exist?  That we should persist over all these decades?  We beat those odds; we should be glad to collect the prize.  Or, at least, that is what I keep telling myself. 

I’ll end on this bright November day with a quote from Emerson:

It is so wonderful to our neurologists that a man can see without his eyes, that it does not occur to them that it is just as wonderful that he should see with them; and that is ever the difference between the wise and the unwise; the latter wonders at what is unusual, the wise man wonders at the usual.  (from “New England Reformers”)

In our old age, let’s storm the gates of Paradise.   Jesus said that the kingdom of God is in your midst.  Beck and Emerson tell us all we have to do is to change our perspective.  Change is hard in old age, but perhaps we could at least try.  Time is short.

Several years ago, I wrote a story about a woman’s misguided attempts to create paradise on earth, rather than just opening her eyes to it.  You can find it here.  I also posted a strange story about one last trip “Back to the Garden,” about finding paradise at the very last minute. 

The Bhagavad Gita in Old Age

There are many reasons to study the Gita in our old age – just ask Gandhi.  Verse 36 of Chapter 4 of the Bhagavad Gita encourages us: “Even though thou be the most sinful of sinners, thou shalt cross the ocean of misery by the boat of knowledge.”  In Gandhi’s commentary (recommended), the Mahatma addresses this passage from the standpoint of old age:

For me, the Gita is the ship, not because it is a learned work but because I have liked it, it has appealed to me in my old age, and verses in it have been a great support to me.

I agree with Gandhi on this, but with caveats.  The Gita is a tricky document.  It would seem to be the story of a strange blue God (Krishna) exhorting a young warrior (Arjuna) to get out on the battlefield and kill people, and yet Gandhi found his doctrine of non-violence in it.  It is a war story that describes the war within us.

Again, the Gita is a little slippery, and many people have gotten it wrong.  There was a popular book a few years back that assumed that the Gita was telling us to follow our bliss.  That might be good advice, but it is not what the Gita is saying.  The Gita’s message is more complex; it is more nuanced; it is more like life.  I hope I can convey some of the complexity and the relevance of the Gita to aging – but, of course, you must read it for yourself.

I recently watched a golf movie that was based on the message of the Gita called The Legend of Bagger Vance.  Good movie (directed by Robert Redford), but it didn’t quite hit the mark.  However, the movie was close enough to get me to read the novel that it was based on, and that was indeed fortuitous.  The novel, by Steven Pressfield, is somewhat drenched in the intricacies of golf.  (I admit to skipping the long paragraphs in the sand traps.)  I noted, when I have written about the Gita before, that Krishna values devotion of any kind – perhaps even devotion to the game of golf?  The author has Bagger (the Krishna figure) tell us that “all sport is holy, for it embodies the objectified search for the subjective experience of yoga, meaning the union, union with the divine.”  But golf is even better because:

In other sports the opponent is regarded as the enemy.  We seek by our actions to disable him…This is not the way to salvation, or more accurately, it is at one remove.  The golfer on the other hand is never directly affected by his opponent’s actions.  He comes to realize that the game is not against the foe, but against himself.  His little self… (121)

Read The Legend of Bagger Vance, but please read the Gita first.

The Gita pops up in unexpected places.  Thoreau took Emerson’s copy with him to Walden.  Emerson’s poem “Brahma” is all but lifted from the Gita.  Whitman scribbled in his copy.  Philip Glass wrote an opera using only the words of the Gita.  Such references abound – there is even a Gita for the CEO.  And I recently found another interesting citation.

It is my daily practice to read the lectionary of the Episcopal Church, wherein are noted feast days for people of note.  Being curious, I often look up the souls honored there and thus came across the rather incredible Vida Dutton Scudder, whose feast day is on October 10.  An American scholar, philanthropist, sometime pacifist, and activist, she also wrote a book about old age called The Privilege of Age, which I have been unable to find.  I did, however, find her autobiography, On Journey, which was written in her seventies.  In it, Scudder chronicles how, born in India as a child of Christian missionaries, she returned to England as a toddler when her father died in a swimming accident.  He left her his books, among which was an early translation of the Gita.  In Scudder’s long memoir, we get much about her participation in the Christian church, her development of settlement houses and retreat centers and the teaching of the principles of social work – her exemplary life goes on for hundreds of pages.  But she reserves the precious last few paragraphs for the Gita.  Specifically, she talks about how the Gita has prepared her for old age (Scudder lived into her nineties), and how the Gita’s admonition to care about the work, but not the results of the work. has taught her to let go of what went before.  It also taught her courage:

…I turned to the Gita in the Great War, to dispel hesitant scruples.  Then it taught me fearlessness, and gave me courage to accept the moral risks in action.  Now the days of action are passed, does the somnolence of age creep over me?… The Gita shall say the last word; it is a word of comfort, it is still better, a word of hope:

“Following the Rule, cleansed of spirit, victorious over himself…his self becomes the Self of all born beings…. Putting away utterly all loves born of purpose, little by little, he shall win stillness [quoted from Gita 6].

The second chapter of the Gita famously tells us that “Thy right is to work only, but never to its fruits.”  In old age, it is often hard not to live in mourning for the fruits of our actions – individually or collectively.  If we do so, we are not meeting the challenge of the moment, not facing the work that is before us of aging and death.  And we must use what energies we have left to do the work that is left to us, while not relinquishing the stillness and peace that is our right.

If you have never read the Gita, please read it.  Read it for the first time without many annotations.  If you want to go further, there are some wonderful commentaries out there, including those by Gandhi (based on his talks) and Eknath Easwaran.  Easwaran has a one volume translation with an excellent introduction, as well as a separate three-volume commentary.   And if anyone has a copy of Scudder’s Privilege of Age, please let me know!  She published an essay of that title in the Atlantic in 1933 which I have, but the full book was published in 1939.

Getting Old in the Time of Trump

From the outside, one might think that seniority is in ascendancy.  One might even think we are living in a gerontocracy.  For the last decade or so, we have had elderly presidents and elderly leaders in congress.  We have one of the oldest senates in history, with an average age of sixty-four.  At seventy-nine, Trump is even older than I am; one might expect that this senior president would have more compassion and respect for the elderly.  One might, of course, wish that Trump would have more compassion and respect for everyone.

Before I lay out some of the problems with growing old in the age of Trump, let me acknowledge that there was a senior tax cut in the “Big Beautiful Bill.”  Beginning this year and ending in 2028, it increases the standard deduction for individual seniors by $6,000.   Thank you, Donald, but it hardly makes up for the angst you have caused in other areas.

Elders have a long list of things to worry about these days.  Relentless and inhuman immigration enforcement has meant that nursing homes and seniors who need home care are having more and more trouble finding caregivers.  Lack of immigrant help on the farms (along with tariff increases) has meant that food prices have increased.  With the war on alternative energy, there are predictions that energy costs will rise and air quality will decline.  Medicaid cuts mean that the impoverished elderly have become more vulnerable as benefits – including potentially nursing home care – disappear.  Medicare and Social Security seem vulnerable in ways that we have not seen for many years.  And we feel we have to defend ourselves against things we don’t really understand, but which the government is letting loose on us – like AI and cryptocurrency.

Senior citizens worry about the increased dissension in the country and within our families.  Trump loves a good fight, and he surely doesn’t mind turning us all against one another.  There seems to be little common ground between Trumpers and liberals, and this dissension has invaded Thanksgiving dinners, weddings, even memorial services.  Seniors fret about children who don’t speak to each other, holiday dinners that are no longer events to be looked forward to. We all fret over family members who can’t be pried away from the particular biases of Fox News.

One of the saddest stories in this regard was the one that the wonderful author Marilynne Robinson told about her own mother, who had moved into an assisted living center and was soon spending her days watching conservative television with her new friends, and bemoaning that her daughter was receiving awards from Obama, who she was sure was a Muslim.

“With a little difficulty we [her mother and herself] finally reached an accommodation, an adult friendship,” she writes. “Then she started watching Fox News.” Her mother and her fellow retirees began to share “salacious dread over coffee cake,” fretting over the rumored “war against Christmas.” “My mother lived out the end of her fortunate life in a state of bitterness and panic, never having had the slightest brush with any experience that would confirm her in these emotions, except, of course, Fox News,” Robinson writes (quoted from a review of Robinson’s What Are We Doing Here? in the NYTimes).

Elders worry about their children or grandchildren who are losing their jobs (even those formerly “safe” federal jobs) and those who might get sent to fight in our own cities. Grandparents (who lived through most of the relevant diseases and know whereof they speak) decry the parents who refuse to vaccinate their grandchildren.    Mostly this is  because they worry about the grandchildren, but it is also because we are afraid of catching the flu, Covid, and other bugs that the children will now be more likely to bring with them when they come to visit.

Old folks with fixed incomes and limited resources know well how the volatility in prices, the stock market, and national mood can make a good day into a fretful one.  The news relays one crisis after another to our fearful ears.   The current shutdown is making travel worrisome; we have a family wedding next month which involves air travel, and we can only hope things will be more normalized by then.

But none of these things is the worst of it.  The worst of it is that Trump displays the stereotypical idiosyncrasies of the elderly – radical conservatism, miserliness, covetousness, blind willfulness, vengefulness.  There are many fine and thoughtful old people; there are many seventy-nine-year-olds that I would trust with my life.  Last week I talked about models for getting old.  The worst thing for old people about Trump is that, in my opinion, he is the very worst of models – both for us elders and for all the younger people behind us who are getting older every day!

And there is one more thing.  He makes us afraid.  As I finished this blog entry, I waffled about whether to publish such outright criticism of our president – not because one shouldn’t criticize the president, but because he is also the very model of vindictiveness.  There, I have said my piece on this No Kings Day.

One last reminder, the negative stereotypes of old age that Trump represents go back to Horace and beyond.  We might compare Saint Benedict’s more positive view of aging as a gift to be properly used.  In the Prologue to his Rule, Benedict tells us that if we grow old it is by way of a truce with God, so that we may have time to “amend our misdeeds” and “to safeguard love.”  Just sending that out there.

Models for Aging?

The Baby Boomers were a generation that suffered from lack of models.  It wasn’t that our parents and grandparents were not admirable people, heroes even, but they did not live the lives that we lived in the times that we had to live them.  Many women who worked their entire adult lives grew up with stay-at-home moms.   Even if our moms worked, the model out there was the carefully coiffed young mother with an apron and a roast in the oven.  Think of June Cleaver or Lucy Ricardo.  Men of our generation did not learn what it meant to have a working wife, not to have dinner on the table when they got home from work, how to handle demands for assistance with domestic chores.  The result was that not only did we work ridiculously hard at home and at work (we did have models for a work ethic), but we were always feeling guilty about not being able to be the kind of parents, husbands, and wives that our parents were.

Then there were relationships.  When I was a child, divorce was never discussed – and even if it did happen, no one talked about it.  And yet, even today, baby boomers divorce more than any other age group: Another life event that we had no template for, and, again, that nagging guilt if it happened to us. 

We must remember that, as children, we soaked up so much unconsciously.  We learned the complexity of language – the words, the grammar, the pronunciation.  We absorbed social norms – ways of eating, sleeping, interacting.  And now we are getting old. We surely absorbed something about what it means to grow old, and – whether we are conscious of it or not – it is affecting us now that we ourselves are old.

When we were children, our models for growing old were our grandparents, who often did not live to be as old as we are now.  They might have been stern (my Dutch paternal grandmother) or doting (my maternal Nana and Papa).  I did not think much as a child about how they lived, but it surely had an influence.  There were other elderly relatives, most of whom seemed like another species.  Surely, we would never look like that!

And our culture provided few positive templates in our formative years for senescence.  Coming of age novels (Bildungsromans) and movies abounded – from Little Women to Catcher in the Rye – but coming of old age stories (Vollendungsromans) were scarce on the ground and rather scary.  There were tales like Heidi, in which an old person gets rescued from isolation and depression by a younger one.  But novels about old people who were interesting in themselves, potential models, were few.

Think of fairy tales.  The protagonists (often princes and princesses) were always young and beautiful.  The evil stepmother was old.  The witches were old.  Consider Arthur Rackham’s illustration from Hansel and Gretel with a very scary witch of advanced years (here).

The stories usually ended with the witch in the oven, the adventure complete, and a wedding, with no note about what happened as the characters aged.  The Grimms’ classic telling of Cinderella ends like this:

And now her two sisters found her to be that fine, beautiful lady whom they had seen at the ball. They threw themselves at her feet to beg pardon for all the ill-treatment they had made her undergo. Cinderella took them up, and, as she embraced them, cried:

That she forgave them with all her heart, and desired them always to love her.

She was conducted to the young prince, dressed as she was; he thought her more charming than ever, and, a few days after, married her. Cinderella, who was no less good than beautiful, gave her two sisters lodgings in the palace, and that very same day matched them with two great lords of the Court.

There are many things to be noted here, but generally, marriage is the end of the story.  Cinderella is always beautiful and bountiful and young in our imaginations.  We wanted to be Cinderella and have no model of an old Cinderella.

Songs of our youth assumed that “forever young” was the way to be.  Even songs like Joni Mitchell’s “Circle Game” or Peter Yarrow’s “Puff the Magic Dragon” assume that upon adulthood, all magic is gone.  Old folks make no appearances.  The movements of the sixties didn’t trust anyone over 30, and it never occurred to us that we would someday be old.

So here we are trying to work out the best way to be old.  The aged folks in Washington surely have not figured it out.  The drunk crowd in Margaritaville don’t seem to have the answer.  But there are clues out there.  And the first step might be to be more aware of our ingrained assumptions.

Around me, there are various models – positive and negative.  There’s the “let’s see the world and spend our money before we die” folks.  There are those kind souls who sacrifice their time and resources to take care of grandchildren so that their kids can avoid daycare and afford a house.  There are those who spend their time and resources in keeping fit mentally and physically, and have a weekly array of classes and therapy sessions.  There are those who secluded themselves during Covid and never fully emerged.  And everything in-between.

While I was writing this, I heard that Jane Goodall had died – at age 91 and while out on the road doing speaking engagements, active and with a project to the end.  An article about her in the NYTimes (What Jane Goodall Taught Us About Living a Long Life) which extols her for staying active, having a purpose, and having an optimistic view about things in general, including the afterlife.  Of course, Jane Goodall was no ordinary woman and we all need more relatable models.  Or, of course, we could structure our own.  I’m just trying to encourage myself and all of us to do it consciously.  Any suggestions are welcome.  And we must remember that – although they could not seem to care less – our grandchildren are watching.

For me, reading and writing are ways to explore alternatives. I have written several reviews of novels about old people (see here and here).  Many of my short stories involve older people trying to come to terms with where they are in life.    You might try my short stories “Closing Time” or “Snickerdoodles” – or write your own.

“Let Them,” Self-Reliance, and Old Age

Sometimes, it seems that life just wants to teach you a lesson. You know this because synchronicities abound.   Driving around doing errands a few days ago, I happened to listen to an interview with the self-help guru Mel Robbins, who was expounding on her “Let Them” theory.  As I understood it, she was exhorting us to pay no attention to what other people do or say – and to just follow our wisdom.  There was a drop of stoicism in the message, and more than a little new-age me-ism.  Nevertheless, I got to thinking about how often what I think (or do) is related to how I perceive and anticipate the reactions of other people.  Once, a few years ago, I was explaining how I was doing something I didn’t want to do to satisfy a neighbor, when a wise friend of mine stopped the conversation to ask, “Don’t tell me at your age you’re still caring what other people think!”  Good question. Why do we still care?

 Later in the day, I was looking for a half-remembered passage in Spinoza and ran across Spinoza’s definition of ambition. Spinoza describes ambition as the “effort to do or omit something, solely in order that we may please men.”   Spinoza’s definition of being free – the highest good – is for something to exist “solely by the necessity of its own nature and determined to action by itself alone.”  In other words, the opposite of ambition. I thought I had turned in my ambition with my retirement papers, but maybe not.  

And that got me thinking about Robert Frost’s “Choose Something Like a Star:”

It [the star] asks a little of us here.
It asks of us a certain height,
So when at times the mob is swayed
To carry praise or blame too far,
We may choose something like a star
To stay our minds on and be staid.

Of course, Frost’s poem includes a reference [“Keats’ eremite”] to Keats’ “Bright Star,” which begins: “Bright star! would I were steadfast as thou art—.”  Keats is talking about love, but he could also be exhorting us to be steadfast to our own mind and not pulled or pushed by the last book we read or our intimations of how others feel. 

Later, after meditating, I listened to a dharma talk by Gil Fronsdal, the theme of which was: “Don’t Make It Worse.”  Life is full of dukkha (suffering), but we do not need to shoot the second arrow (blame, regret, fear, etc.) and make it worse. And, of course, when things are bad, one of the ways we make it worse is by worrying about what people will think.  Buddhism talks about pairs of opposing winds that buffet our lives, one of which is praise and blame.  The goal is to steady ourselves in the storm.

My more rational mind (the mind that Spinoza exhorts me to consult more often) tells me that my friend was right.  Why should old people care what other people think?  And “other people” includes neighbors, books, internet gurus, friends, or that critical-looking woman in my yoga class. We’ve lived through enough bad decisions, taken enough bad advice, and mistakenly followed the crowd enough times that we should certainly have learned our lesson. This does not mean that we do not care about anything – it just means that we should know better than to give our equanimity away to the whims of others.  We should look inward for the answers. 

Which brought me to this from Emerson and his essay on self-reliance, which is really what we are talking about here:

He who knows that power is inborn, that he is weak because he has looked for good out of him and elsewhere, and so perceiving, throws himself unhesitatingly on his thought, instantly rights himself, stands in the erect position, commands his limbs, works miracles…

I think that one of the reasons so many older people are drawn to write memoirs of one kind or another is to explore what it is that we have learned, what we know.  And it is a worthwhile exercise if only for that purpose.  I have given myself the task of reviewing my old journals for the same reason.

Being old means often looking weak and vulnerable to the outside world, and we often reflect that view back on ourselves.  Lately, these is a ubiquitous meme on the net with post-menopausal women talking about how they “don’t care” about one thing or another.  There are a lot of things I do care about, but it seems that outside approval should not be one of them.  It is easier however to look for answers in a book or from someone else.  But, we can do it.  After all these years, we’re still here and we’ve got to trust that we have learned something.  And that our own opinion is infinitely superior (at least for ourselves) than the person’s next door or the latest new-age guru.

Often, old folks have to stand up to the consternation and advice of their younger relatives.  Holding our own is not easy, but it is often necessary.  You might try my story, “Again and Again and Again,” for an example of this.

Slowness in Old Age – Perhaps a Gentle Blessing?

I have always been interested in the concept of time, at once fascinated with it and threatened by it.  Back in graduate school, I wrote essays about the depiction of time in literature from different time periods.  For example, in The Canterbury Tales we find multiple ways of telling time.  The new technology (mechanical clocks) was so recent that it had not had time, as yet, to eradicate prior knowledge (unlike our current era, when many children growing up in the digital age cannot tell time on an analogue clock).  In one short passage, Chaucer refers to the time in at least four different ways: as a portion of the “artificial day”, by the length of the shadows, by the degrees of inclination of the sun, and by the hour of the “clokke.”  The clock in this case was probably read by ear, by the chimes, and emanated often from the local monastery, reminding all that all time was God’s time.  It is of note that early Christians did not believe in usury because, among other reasons, it involved making money through time and time belonged to God.

By Jonathan Swift’s era, however, usury was accepted, and time was dominated by mechanical devices.  Not only did clocks have faces and more exact calibration, but they were even carried in one’s pocket, something which puzzled the Lilliputians when they encountered Gulliver:

He [Gulliver] put this engine [pocket watch] into our ears, which made an incessant noise, like that of a water-mill: and we conjecture it is either some unknown animal, or the god that he worships; but we are more inclined to the latter opinion, because he assured us, (if we understood him right, for he expressed himself very imperfectly) that he seldom did anything without consulting it. He called it his oracle, and said, it pointed out the time for every action of his life.

I was always a creature of the clock.  When I was a working mother with two children, I had no choice.  Every moment was scheduled.  I was good at it, and it became a habit.  What I am apparently not so good at is slowing down.  There is a quote that is making the rounds these days from the Nigerian philosopher Bayo Akomolafe: “The times are urgent; let us slow down.”  He also said that “The idea of slowing down is not about getting answers, it is about questioning our questions.”  Akomolafe is talking about global humanitarian issues like climate change and refugee displacement, but slowness is also, it seems to me, necessary to navigate old age.  First of all, we are no longer built for speed.  Almost every fall that my mother took in the latter part of her life happened when she was rushing to answer a phone, tending to a barking dog, or some such non-emergency.  Secondly, haste makes waste.  We don’t have the energy or money to cope with larger mistakes.  Lastly, we are approaching the end.  It is time to put on the brakes and look around us before we become stardust again.

All of this makes sense, but – nevertheless – old habits and values don’t change easily.  For a simple example, I find myself frustrated with fast pieces on the piano.  I can play them, but not at accepted tempo, not fast enough.  I am just playing for myself (and my husband who, locked in his study, is an involuntary audience).  Would I rather play the piece well but very slowly or fast with mistakes and frustrations? Slow practice has always been recommended. “If you practice something slowly, you forget it slowly. If you practice something fast, you forget it fast,” advised Itzhak Perlman.  And then there is this from Saint-Saens: “One must practice slowly, then more slowly, and finally slowly.”  Since all the piano playing I do could be labeled as “practice,” slow is fine with me and enables me to play pieces that would ordinarily be beyond me.  It is a trick, however, to go slowly and keep an even tempo; this is true both on the piano and in life, I think.

The same is true for reading and writing.  There is this from an interview with one of my favorite writers, Lewis Mumford, which took place when he was in his eighties and still producing books:

The really annoying part of the aging process is not what happens externally—one has plenty of time to get prepared for that—but what happens internally,” he says. “One knows one isn’t quite as good. One’s energies are lower. When I was writing my major books, I would do between 3,000 and 4,000 words in the morning, between 8 and 11:30. Now I’m very happy to do 1,500 or 2,000 words.

“Now I’m very happy to ….”  There is an acceptance of reality in Mumford that is graceful and wise.  And the thought that goes into that smaller word count may make for better prose than the facile writing of our youth.  Early readers (before the 17th century) spoke words aloud as they read.  Until recently writers used pen and paper to write and revised with cross-outs and clipped-on inserts.  These practices were slower, but surely made for better understanding.

Slowness is in the air.  We are now being told that slow learning is better than fast; slow thought is a necessary balance to fast intuitive thinking.  And, of course, slow food is better than fast food. One of my children recently told me that he couldn’t imagine spending the time we spend on food shopping, planning, preparation and clean-up.  I could have argued that, once you have a personal catalogue of recipes and experience in preparing them, it does not take that much more time than driving to a restaurant, waiting for your server, etc.  But the real answer is that preparing food is a worthwhile activity in itself – and what would you be doing if you weren’t slicing vegetables for tonight’s stew?  I could go on and on, but talking to younger people almost never convinces them, and I have better things to do.

“Quickening” is the term we use for the very first detectible movement of a fetus in its mother’s womb.  It is a big moment for pregnant mothers and marks the first independent action of a new life.  If the beginning of life is “quickening,” maybe we need an equivalent “slowening” for the last part of life. And perhaps, by accepting our slowness, by appreciating it, we are accepting one of the greatest gifts of old age.

If you are interested in the development of timekeeping, Lewis Mumford’s Technics and Civilization is highly recommended, although I believe it is out of print.  Anything by Mumford is highly recommended.  I have also posted here my old essay on the depiction of time in The Canterbury Tales.

And lastly, I just read this morning’s New York Times Magazine, where there is an article on the peace and joy of slow driving.  I am already a right lane person.

A Great Old Age Simile from Bertrand Russell – and Some Advice

Bertrand Russell lived to be very old, and – in his rational and philosophical way – was much interested in the best way to grow old. (I could have told him it was slowly!)  Russell starts by admitting that the best advice is to “choose your ancestors carefully” – his own parents died young, but his grandparents led long and productive lives.  (His paternal grandfather was prime minister of England well into his 70s and an active opposition leader long after that.)  Russell cautions us against expecting too much from our children and gives the realistic advice that they won’t abide much from their elders in the way of advice or society – but they will welcome any funds that might be forthcoming.  All true enough.

In fact, in his essay, “How to Grow Old,” Russell says there are two major mistakes that oldsters make.  The first is to cling to the younger generation, or even worse, to try to imitate them.  The other error is to cling to the past:

It does not do to live in memories, in regrets for the good old days, or in sadness about friends who are dead.  One’s thoughts must be directed to the future, and to things about which there is something to be done.  This is not always easy; one’s own past is a gradually increasing weight.

So, what does Mr. Russell suggest that we do? His great mind has pondered this, and his conclusion is much like that of his contemporary, Simone de Beauvoir (see here), both of whom think that we need “projects” in old age:

I think that a successful old age is easiest for those who have strong impersonal interests involving appropriate activities.  It is in this sphere that experience is really fruitful, and it is in this sphere that the wisdom born of experience can be exercised without being oppressive.

In his 80s and 90s, Russell took on things like nuclear disarmament, opposition to the Vietnam War, and overpopulation.  I hope he would have also approved of less noble pursuits and projects – like playing the piano or cultivating a garden.  Russell himself was purported to dabble in birdwatching.

Russell acknowledges that fear of death is often an issue with the old, but he finds this somewhat “ignoble.”  It is in talking about the best way to overcome our mortal fear that he waxes the most poetic, as we can see in this passage:

The best way to overcome it—so at least it seems to me—is to make your interests gradually wider and more impersonal, until bit by bit the walls of the ego recede, and your life becomes increasingly merged in the universal life. An individual human existence should be like a river: small at first, narrowly contained within its banks, and rushing passionately past rocks and over waterfalls. Gradually the river grows wider, the banks recede, the waters flow more quietly, and in the end, without any visible break, they become merged in the sea, and painlessly lose their individual being. The man who, in old age, can see his life in this way, will not suffer from the fear of death, since the things he cares for will continue. And if, with the decay of vitality, weariness increases, the thought of rest will not be unwelcome. I should wish to die while still at work, knowing that others will carry on what I can no longer do and content in the thought that what was possible has been done.

I love water metaphors for life.  Buddhism, Taoism, Christianity – all spiritual thought comes back to the symbol, the example, of water.  We are made of water, we need water, and – at our best – we are like water.  The Tao reminds us that, like the Tao, “water doesn’t strive or compete. It simply flows, finding its own path. [reaching its own level,] and adapting to the environment. This teaches the importance of letting go of ego and resistance, allowing things to unfold naturally.”

And, this brings me to Spinoza.  (I always come back to Spinoza.)  Many great geniuses – Russell and Einstein to name just two – were Spinozans.  Russell tells us that Spinoza was the “best example” of being able to view the world in this impersonal way as the end approached:

Spinoza, who was perhaps the best example of the way of feeling of which I am speaking remained completely calm at all times, and in the last days of his life preserved the same friendly interest in others as he had shown in his days of health.  To a man whose hopes and wishes extend widely beyond his personal life, there is not the same occasion for fear that there is for a man of more limited desires.

But, assuming we can transcend the personal, where does that leave us?  These are tough days. In my greener years, I protested the Vietnam War, signed petitions, marched for peace.  I was young, but things did not seem so overwhelming as they are today.  I was stronger and more resilient. I bellowed, but I did not despair.  Now I am tired, and I often despair.  I would urge the younger folks to get more involved, but we did not listen to our elders who told us to get less involved.  The tides rise and fall.  Tranquility in old age does not mean giving in; it means giving up neither our serenity nor our standards. And we must keep in mind that we are about to “merged in the sea.”  Russell is also famous for telling us, “The secret of happiness is to face the fact that the world is horrible, horrible, horrible.”  These days the world is often horrible, and yet we must maintain our equanimity and “friendly interest.”  Not easy.

It is always interesting to look at how smart people have approached and lived their own old ages.  For more about the conjunction of old age and genius, you might look back on my blog, “Does Life Have Two Trajectories?”