can do for pleasure when they are old. But we are there with the same old illusions and the same old delusions, with fantasies promising us and beckoning us; with castles that we begin to build, never stopping to think whether these castles will be finished; we get our satisfaction and we kill our time listening to the voices and building the castles.62
In Sara Gruen’s Water for Elephants a man in his nineties says: “Age is a terrible thief. Just when you’re getting the hang of life, it knocks your legs out from under you and stoops your back.”63
He elaborates:
You start to forget words—they’re on the tip of your tongue, but instead of eventually dislodging, they stay there. You go upstairs to fetch something, and by the time you get there you can’t remember what it was you were after. You call your child by the names of all your other children and finally the dog before you get to his.
I think both the aging Clarence Darrow and the fictitious man in Water for Elephants speak truth. Age is a terrible thief “just when we’re getting the hang of life.” But we had best go into life’s final chapter “with fantasies promising us and beckoning us.” It is better not to stop building those castles—whether we finish them or not is outside our control and largely irrelevant.
I am all for being realistic about old age. Notwithstanding, season reality with a little hope. Getting old is like eating cabbage—it goes down better with a little salt.
March 11
The ten-point scale.
It has become a common measurement in our time. Medical people ask: “How would you describe your pain on a ten-point scale?” If I assign my pain ten points, that means it is unbearable, the worst pain I have ever felt. The aim of the scale is to quantify a subjective experience.
That may be a fair way to speak of how much we enjoy or dislike a movie or how delectable or disgusting we find a casserole. Maybe the ten-point scale is also useful in putting life’s experiences, especially negative ones, in perspective.
Several days ago a little old lady backed into our new car and left a big dent in the driver’s side. She was at fault, her insurance will fix it, no one was hurt, and we are left with an unsightly car door for a week or so before I drop it off at a body shop to be repaired. I assign that a two. In the course of human events, it was so minor—a minuscule annoyance, an inconvenience, a flea bite—a one or a two.
I think I would give ten points only to a situation of utter devastation and hopelessness. Seeing my family herded into a gas chamber to be exterminated would be a ten. I think I would give a nine to a member of my family being raped or murdered or completing suicide. I might survive it, but I would go forward broken, nursing an almost unbearable wound in my heart forever.
My point is that many of us overreact to life’s stressors. We “catastrophize” (psychotherapist Albert Ellis liked to say) over life’s dented doors.
And yes, my family tires of hearing me ask: “On a ten-point scale, how many points should you give that?”
March 12
Whatever we think of Tiger Woods’s philandering and his public confession of guilt or Paula Dean’s public apology for using racial slurs, one thing on which we can agree is the one thing their business associates had foremost on their minds: “How is this performance going to affect the Tiger Woods (or Paula Dean) brand?”
Gatorade, AT&T, Nike and other companies once bet over $100 million annually that the Tiger Woods brand—greatest golfer in world history plus all-around nice guy—would make them more bucks.
Brand, when I was growing up, was something a cowboy put on a cow. Cowboys seared their unique mark into the hide of their property. Today the word refers to the image cultivated by a person or a business. The advertising industry aims to sear a brand (more than a product) into consumers’ brains. Tiger Woods’s business partners are hoping his confession will help pull his weakened brand out of the fire.
I was discussing Albert Schweitzer with a class of college seniors and used a sentence often spoken of Schweitzer: “He made his life his argument.” With three earned doctorates, Schweitzer decided that instead of spending his life ensconced in a European university talking up Christian love and service, he would give his life to putting into practice love and service as a jungle doctor in Africa.
One student in my class had an epiphany that she put in writing and gave to me: “Schweitzer definitely has caused me to wonder whether or not I am making my life my argument. It’s also made me wonder what my argument really is.”
Each one of us—whether we are aware of it or not—is building a brand. Our life is an argument for something. A sobering question is, to quote one tenderhearted college senior, “what my argument really is.”
March 13
“Amazing Grace”
Probably no one ever called her that in her first one hundred years. Orphaned at twelve, taken in by family and friends until she was adopted, Grace Groner worked as a secretary for forty-three years. She bought her clothes at rummage sales, never owned a car, and lived alone in a one-bedroom cottage. These days thirteen hundred Lake Forest (Illinois) College students have scholarships, internships, and studies abroad because of her. They call her “Amazing Grace.”
When she died in January, 2000, at age one hundred, Grace Groner left $7 million to her alma mater, Lake Forest College. She never sold the three shares of Abbott Laboratories stock she bought in 1935 for $180. When she died, after many stock splits and dividends reinvested, her initial investment had grown into a $7 million fortune.64
I recently listened to a professor sound off about “this generation,” in particular how they make no provision for the future. He stereotyped them as addicts to “instant gratification and instant communication.” His caricature was of a student wolfing down a Big Mac (instant food paid for with plastic money), text-messaging with the other hand (im chewing bm now), while steering the car with his knees. He would not expect any of them, like a Grace Groner, to set aside anything for old age.
Most of us admire the plodding, intentional game plan of a John McPhee, Pulitzer Prize-winning writer, Princeton professor, and author of twenty five books. He says he hardly ever has cranked out more than one single-spaced page a day. “You know, you put an ounce in a bucket every day,” he explains, “before you know it you have a quart.”
Aesop’s ancient story about the turtle and the hare may be truer in our time than ever before. There is still something to be said for eschewing immediate pleasure for taking the long view; something to be said for the discipline and perseverance of the turtle, or John McPhee, or “Amazing Grace” Groner.
March 14
Three women who met each other almost half a century ago on the campus of George Peabody College in Nashville reunited, this time bringing their spouses with them to a Turkish restaurant. Together their three marriages represented 128 years of lasting love. Joining them was one couple’s daughter and the daughter’s fiancé.
At one point one of the old married men quipped: “It would be a shame to deny this young couple the benefit of all the wisdom assembled here. Let’s each of us put into one word the secret of our marriage.”
The first to volunteer said “forgiveness.” Holding
