This week I got to, once again, go to one of my Alma Maters – Drew University – to do research in their fabulous library. I know that most of us use the internet almost exclusively, but the truth is that for a lot of what I am working on, the materials have either not been scanned (not enough use to make it cost-effective) or cost a lot to gain access to. And I found this to be true; a number of books I used – some of them 30-40 years old, seem to have never been opened! Yes – that is how cutting-edge what I am working on is. But that’s not what today’s thought is about.
I needed to get a password to log onto the library system, so I asked these very nice young people at the help desk to let me do that. The first one asked me for my email when I was a student there, and I told her that email didn’t exist when I attended Drew. She looked at me like I had just broken out of an insane asylum, so I made it worse: I told her that the internet was created while I was a student. It was like trying to explain a car to a 90-year-old in 1900. The second student – and I think both of them were graduate students, so over 22 – asked very politely what year I graduated, and when I told him 1986, he actually flinched! And both of them probably thought I meant undergraduate and not seminary. I added one more item that blew their minds – laptops had only been invented a couple of years earlier, but they were so expensive that few people could afford them. Yes, I told them, I am old. My work there was done.
I heard a joke the other day that the reason Gen X-ers are mad all the time is that they bought albums, then replaced them with 8-tracks, then cassettes, the CDs, then again with really expensive vinyl, then everything went digital, and we have to pay for it all over again. I was born a couple of years before that generation started, but I feel their pain. All of this is to say that everyone ages, time marches on, technology advances, and this is how life is. Imagine people wrapping their heads around the printing press or the calculator when they were first invented. Imagine watching rockets carry people to the moon (some of you did!) No matter how much one might long for the days of the Luddites, it can’t happen. We can’t, as Heraclitus said, step into the same river twice – and why would we want to?
We can age and mourn our youth, or we can age with a sense of adventure. I have always said that getting older beats the alternative, and that is mostly true. We can age well, or we can become bitter and cranky and yell at kids to get off our lawn. We have no choice but to age until we die, so how we do it is mostly up to us. I would like to think these Drew students were amazed at how youthful and vigorous I was, and that’s why they were so shocked (that’s my story, and I’m sticking to it). The reality is that when we are young, we don’t really know what came before us. I am reminded of this every day when I interact with the rapidly decreasing number of people who are older than I am, and it brings me joy. And my hope for those bright, young students is that someday they will be lucky enough to make some kids at a help desk flinch too. Because life goes on – and we should enjoy it while we have it.
Prayer – We thank You God for this precious life You have given to us. May we cherish it always. Amen.
Today’s art is “Aging” by Robert Nelson.