First, apologies for writing so late last night that my first sentence if barely understandable, even to me.
Anyway...
Ella, I like your "new ideas" response. I'm guessing that has much to do with your connection to SeniorLearn.org. And I can see how addictive it can become.
The other day I mentioned my interview with philosopher William Barrett and his sad take on his failure to become a novelist. But I had another experience with Barrett, my first meeting with him, years before my interview, of which your response, Ella, reminded me. It is, I think, truly germane and makes me wonder, what if a man like Barrett had had a relationship with a group like this? (BTW: I believe I wrote his book was One Dimensional Man; I misstated: the title was Irrational Man.) Here's the story:
When I was in my 20s, I was dating a smart, contained young woman name Joanne who was still living at home with her family in Tarrytown, NY. One evening, while I was there, I was introduced to her younger sister's friend, who happened to be William Barrett's daughter, Nell. I told her how much I admired her father's work. She was astonished, being a teenager in her own world, that anyone other than her father's students might know his work. I told her how much I would love to me him. Then and there, she picked up the telephone and called her dad. "Dad, there's a guy here who says..." When she got off the phone, Barrett's daughter said, "Willie says that if you want to meet him, drive over to the house and pick him up and bring a six-pack of beer."
I did just that, and brought him back to Joanne's parents' house, where we all sat on the floor and listened to William Barrett hold forth, opening his capacious mind and sharing his thoughts, principally on the brilliance of Cezanne, Picasso, and Giacometti. The night progressed into the wee hours. And late along, I drove Barrett home. But we ran into a few problems: a heavy fog had rolled in off the Hudson, making it difficult for me to see anything that would remind me, unfamiliar as I was with the neighborhood, how to get back to Barrett's house. And he had had too many beers to help. So, eventually I pulled off to the side of the road to wait for things to clear. While we sat there, I asked Barrett a question I can't quite remember, but it elicited a response I will never forget. He said, "If you're asking me how I go on with my life, living here," he said, in part, referring to the fact that in suburbia there was not of the intellectual hotbed of his youth. "I'll tell you, I carry my community inside me and I continue to have conversations with the great minds of my past."
At the time, I thought it was a great and sustaining answer. Now, decades later, I see two sides of it. And what strikes me most deeply is how lucky we are if we can properly use the technology available to us properly, to be able to make real and actual connections -- and share current ideas -- to energize our minds, hearts, and lives, and not have to settle for the imagined conversation. I know there are a lot of frivolous use of the internet, but seeing the conversation here has made me see, too, how powerfully enriching and motivating a site like this can be. And what a shame Willie Barrett, who was critical of how contemporary society was missing the proper directives of technology, never got a chance to benefit.
And thank you, Ginny. Let's see if I can answer some of your questions:
I keep looking at the locations: Haddonfield NJ, close to Moorestown, my own stomping ground, Broward County Florida, Takoma Park, Maryland, Warranton, Virginia, DC, Mass, etc., etc. How did you hear about all these people in such various locales?
My methods of research were various. I found some subject doing web searches like "Success after sixty?" I also called lots of organizations. I called the Small Business Administration in Washington, D.C., for example, and asked for help in finding an entrepreneur who fit my criteria. A lovely woman in the press office sent out a nationwide request, and field officers sent back recommendations. Another instance: I wrote SeniorNet and Marcie Schwarz responded by referring Robby and Betty Reid Soskin. (I am eternally grateful to Marcie.) Others came through word of mouth.
We're not all going to be like some of these folks, or even when we follow a particular dream, it MAY not be rewarded...except to provide inherent pleasure. How are small dreams different from these big ones?
Well, first, I'm sitting here wondering: what does it mean to "be rewarded?" Few of the people featured were "rewarded" financially, so it's not that. They were rewarded by having achieved something tangible, something that validated their steadfast efforts. And I believed such commitment and passion always leads somewhere. But what if if, say, Thomas had danced all these years in class but not gotten the break he did and fallen into the spotlight. He still would have benefitted in enormous ways. He still would have found his "truest tribe." He still would have had the intellectual, physical, and communal benefits of daily engagement with dance. What if Margie had run, but not won? For her, competition is critical and winning means a lot. But I think it's fair to imagine that her discipline, would have brought other rewards; the engagement might have meant spending more time working with young children, and that may have developed. But, of course, she would still have the reward of feeling her own, personal accomplishment, of her health and attitude. What if the Smiths had merely continued to serve their community, but had not won recognition: As happy as the recognition may make them, I have every reason to believe their daily service to others is what matters most to them. That is their reward.
So if we had to outline each story, what, I ask myself, do they have in common? Is it fair to say each one, doing what they do anyway, the mother at the party for her 2nd grader, the retired teacher wanting to help teach again, the sculptor, the late life filmmaker, kept working on the individual thing they liked to do, and kept at it, the "keeping at it" being key, refining it, just kept swimming, till it really did become something extraordinary?
Yes, I think that's it precisely. As Dana Dakin says, what made her organization successful wasn't "brain science, we just kept coming back." In a sense, it's that personal devotion that transforms. Neuroscientists now know that it's precisely that repetition that causes new chemical tracks to be laid down in the brain, causes neurogenisis and reorganization of the brain. And it seems to me that when what we do, passionately (meaning with devotion) and with discipline, intersects with engagement with others, what I think of as success is inevitable.
Is it more a question of live this day as if you knew it were your last, or what would you do if you were told you'd live 100 more years in perfect health? What would you want to do? Is it too late?
Paritially, yes. But I'm not so sure it's necessary to add the freight of "your last day." It certainly helped Alidra Solday, though, to ask the question, "What do I want to do in my next lifetime?" when her life was threatened. Ultimately, she answered, "What if there is no next?" and she began her way to becoming a documentarian. She took a class. Then more classes. Then she found an idea. And so on, step by step, for five years. But having this conversation has made me keenly aware it is being present and committed do doing what we do. Those who do things with a civic purpose attached will, I think, naturally have expanding goals. But, for what it's worth, I believe that creativity is born of the love of doing something and the devotion and presence it requires of us. My mother's paintings will never be museum works and that was never her ambition. Her ambition was to do what she loved well, and then better. And out of that came connection to others -- in class and outside. For the purpose of the book, I sought examples of people whose work had received external validation because I thought it best to show the extent of the possible. And reading the last sentence back to myself I wonder if that doesn't ultimately hold the key to what I believe most important: Living in a state of possibility. Not the dreamy place that doesn't exist, but possibility that exists because we apply ourselves, body and soul, to what we love.
