A moment in time

He flashed a moment

in time when he was

young, a moment

in time when he knew

everything, a moment

in time when anything

was possible, a moment

in time when empires

could be conquered.

He flashed a moment

in time when he was

old and understood

how little he knew.

Photograph by George Hodan via Public Domain Pictures. Used with permission.

The Strong and the Gray

I’m confident that at least 14 sociologists has studied this, many times over, and come to different conclusions from their colleagues, but when did the American obsession with youth actually begin? Was it something that’s been there all along?  Or is it of more recent vintage?

I don’t think it’s my imagination. Putting off the advance of age is a multi-billion dollar industry. Popular culture is aimed squarely at youth. Advertising focuses on and celebrates youth.

I don’t know when it started, but I suspect elements of our obsession with youth have always been embedded with the culture, relatively hidden or of minor note, until two things happened, both in the 20^th century: mass media, beginning with radio but changed forever with television, and then the Baby Boom.

I’m a Boomer myself, one of 86 million strong born between 1946 and 1964 (I’m not exactly sure why 1964 is the cut-off date, but it usually is). The Baby Boom came into this world like a human tsunami and changed everything about America: schools, culture, the workplace, social and moral values, entertainment, attitudes about trust and authority – there wasn’t much left untouched. And now we’re beginning to enter retirement, and we’re going to remake nursing homes, geriatric medicine and health, and the cemetery business.

An interesting observation: it was only with the Baby Boom that generations of Americans came to have names. In a sense, we even required that our parents’ generation be named (thank you, Tom Brokaw). And after us is Gen X, Gen Y, Millenials. Even our children were referred to as the Baby Boomlet.

Mass media, demographic changes, fear of aging and death – all of these have contributed with our obsession with youth. And then there’s also the reality that young people simply look more attractive than old people.

We associate youth with change, ideas, the willingness to try to new things, the refusal to accept the status quo, and even physical strength. We associate old people with gray hair, failing eyesight, and wheelchairs. We don’t associate older people with wisdom, unless they happen to be the guru of the month.

The Bible would say we have it backwards.

In The Fire of Delayed Answers, Bob Sorge cites Proverbs 20:29: “The glory of young men is their strength, and the splendor of old men is their gray head.” From an American cultural perspective, we get the part about youth and strength, but no one associates gray hair with splendor.

But the question is, where does the gray hair come from?

“Gray hair,” Sorge says, “represents experience, pain, one who has lived though life’s difficulties.” And gray hair sits atop those who were once young and strong.

He describes it as a life process – something that must happen if one is to attain wisdom. Over time, he says, God uses the experiences of life to help us understand that it’s not about us, it’s not about youth and beauty and strength. It’s about something else entirely.

Someone who has been through the experiences of life “has seen the faithfulness of God through great pressures, and he now has a testimony. It is not the strong but the gray who are fruitful” (emphasis added).

Our culture has it exactly backwards.

Led by Jason Stasyszen and Sarah Salter, we’ve been reading The Fire of Delayed Answers. To see more posts on this chapter, “Brokenness,” please visit Sarah at Living Between the Lines.

Photograph by George Hodan via Public Domain Pictures. Used with permission.

Everyone is young, once

I don’t spend a lot of time on Facebook, most likely because I have to manage a corporate Facebook page as part of my job (along with other social media). I do like seeing what friends are up to, and I “like” several pages related to writing and poetry and check those on a regular basis.

Everyone has a “reconnect” Facebook story. Last year I had a surprise friend request from my best friend in junior high – someone I hadn’t seen since high school. We actually were able to talk on the telephone, and it was great fun to remember life at 12 and 13 years old (and he remembered things I had long ago forgotten about, like riding the bus into downtown New Orleans for a movie, and where we went biking).

This past week, a friend request arrived, and I looked at the name and said “It couldn’t be.” But it was. The guy who was a copy boy at the Beaumont, Texas, Enterprise in 1973 had sent the request.

Something like this happens, and you move back 40 years in time. It was the summer of 1973, and my first job out of college. I was all of 21, engaged to be married, and working as a brand new copy editor. The copy boy, John Sniffen by name, took photographs; I believe he was taking a photojournalism course at the local university.

And there we are, again, a group of editors, mostly young, working on the publication of three editions of a newspaper in a small town in Texas. I remember the names of my colleagues. This photo would most likely have been taken in June because of where I’m sitting – the spot designated for whomever was the new kid on the block. Because staff turnover tended to be high, with three months I would occasionally sit in the position at the far left – assistant slot man. Three months was all it took to go from newbie to No. 2 on the copy desk.

It was an exciting time to be in journalism – the Watergate scandal was unfolding; Vice President Agnew would resign that fall; and the Yom Kippur War broke out in October, ushering in the first oil embargo the United States had experienced. The world changed forever in those few months.

After we were married that August, my wife also worked here as a copy editor.

Another interesting (for me) part of this is that we reconnected because we have a mutual friend. John is a member of the same church as Marcus Goodyear, editor of The High Calling.

A Facebook friend request, a photograph – and suddenly you’re reminded that you were young, once.

Everyone is young, once.

Photograph by John Sniffen, summer 1973, Beaumont, Texas, Enterprise copy desk.

Wordsworth was right

I’m older now, older

than I ever imagined

myself to be, my mind

stuck in neutral at nineteen

and my body demonstrating

daily how ridiculous

that notion is, but I’m

older now, older than I ever

imagined myself to be, and

I see so much that I only

knew before, understanding

how much was created

in the first ten years.

Wordsworth was right, but

it takes too long to grasp

his truth, and realize our youth

is more alive now than it was

when we lived it.

Photograph by Petr Kratochvil via Public Domain Pictures. Used with permission.