SOMETHING
about aging and communicating facts to the young these days. Ideally,
the so-called Truth is what must be passed to the young by the
old—but it's not that easy, as it sounds. There are no Truths if
these aren't backed up by Facts. So you talk about facts first.
Facts, historical and cultural facts, that you gathered following
years and years and years of experiential journey/s. Am I being too
profound? Okay... What I'm trying to say is, when you get older with
so many stuff and things to share, facts and infos that are actually
wisdom but sound like hilarious BS to the young, it all boils down to
two extremes. You either shut your mouth and savor quiet. Or you talk
and talk and talk and talk—till you get exhausted. Why is that?
When
you are 50+ years old, for example, most likely you've gone through 4
or 5 or 6 changes of government leadership, fashion trends, economic
lives, music industry upheavals, scientific/technological advances,
global sociopolitical alignments etc. In regards your personal life,
you've probably survived an acute ailment, changed religions or faith
or paradigms, traveled to a number of cultural terrains, married and
divorced, dated a few women, and probably raised kids. Which means,
when a discussion kicks in about a certain subject, most likely you
got a lot to say. You can't just say, “Oh yeah, that's it.” You
are coaxed or moved to explain more, painstakingly drawing parallels
and presenting differences between generations based on experiential
truths—so you'd be able to support a conclusion. But then, it's
never enough, never sufficient to just explain all these in one
sitting...
So you get disappointed. You are told that you are being oblique, you are being self-righteous. People younger than you may debate you on the basis of what they read or what their professors said or what are advocated to them on their own/current time. You've gone through all these processes of education and knowing. But you can't say, “I've been there, you didn't—you are just in the process of knowing.” So in exasperation, you shut your mouth and try to listen, especially when you are told the young needs to be listened to as well. Most likely your passion and intensity are consigned as midlife crisis or old dude narcissism. So you decide to just listen—but you can't just listen and try not to... You know what I'm saying. You just have to say something. You've been there, you gotta say that you've been there. But then you gotta stop pushing it. So most likely you just keep quiet. And hope that you'd meet and talk with someone who have also gone through five decades of life, or someone who is willing to take the words in and save them in their memory bank, to review later—as they head to their own journey...
So you get disappointed. You are told that you are being oblique, you are being self-righteous. People younger than you may debate you on the basis of what they read or what their professors said or what are advocated to them on their own/current time. You've gone through all these processes of education and knowing. But you can't say, “I've been there, you didn't—you are just in the process of knowing.” So in exasperation, you shut your mouth and try to listen, especially when you are told the young needs to be listened to as well. Most likely your passion and intensity are consigned as midlife crisis or old dude narcissism. So you decide to just listen—but you can't just listen and try not to... You know what I'm saying. You just have to say something. You've been there, you gotta say that you've been there. But then you gotta stop pushing it. So most likely you just keep quiet. And hope that you'd meet and talk with someone who have also gone through five decades of life, or someone who is willing to take the words in and save them in their memory bank, to review later—as they head to their own journey...
Not
many young people behave like that these days though. The young in
this high-technology, one-click universe create their own media,
write their own independent interpretation of historical facts,
formulate their own system of faith or spirituality, draw out their
politically-correct definition of human reflex and response
irrelevant of sociocultural background or the past. They create their
own Truths from the here and now. You simply belong in the past and
the young have long sailed away. The bridge has been burned or
burning.
Ergo,
when you see an old man quietly ruminating in a corner, that is okay.
Maybe he's trying to navigate his memory and then write a book. Many
times, old people simply want to write a book, as a personal journal
to heal wounds from the past or simply to document the journey. Put
everything in writing then leave those words out there for humanity
to peruse, accept, reject or just utilize as tools to review and
assess life later. Talking and talking and talking don't really help.
It's frustrating. It's mentally draining. Such energy should be saved
somehow in traversing the memory, where materials abound--composite
truths that end up in your book. Just write `em. It is almost
impossible to hand over truths on a text message or cafe chat these
days. That is why I am all over Facebook and now staring at more than
a dozen book projects to finish before I turn older and older and
older... Write the damn book.
No comments:
Post a Comment