DAY 10
From the devotional book Beyond Words by Frederick Buechner
“WHEN YOU HIT SIXTY or so, you start having a new feeling about your own generation. Like you, they can remember the Trilon and Perisphere, Lum and Abner, ancient Civil War veterans riding in open cars at the rear of Memorial Day parades, the Lindbergh kidnapping, cigarettes in flat fifties which nobody believed then could do any more to you than cut your wind. Like you, they know about blackouts, bond rallies, A-stickers, “Kilroy Was Here.” They remember where they were when the news came through that FDR was dead of a stroke in Warm Springs, and they could join you in singing “Bei Mir Bist Du Schön” and “The Last Time I Saw Paris.” They wept at Spencer Tracy with his legs bitten off in Captains Courageous.
As time goes by, you start picking them out in crowds. There aren’t as many of them around as there used to be. More likely than not, you don’t say anything, and neither do they, but something seems to pass between you anyhow. They have come from the same beginning. They have seen the same sights along the way. They are bound for the same end and will get there about the same time you do. There are some who by the looks of them you wouldn’t invite home for dinner on a bet, but they are your compagnons de voyage even so. You wish them well.
It is sad to think that it has taken you so many years to reach so obvious a conclusion.”
My reflection I am rapidly aproaching that certain age Buechner refers to in the first line of this devotional, so this one, like some others before it, truly reonates personally. Of course, being of a different generation, I only know of the things he refers to second-hand. I’m trying to remember some things unique to my age group. Iran hostage crisis. Iran/Contra five years later. Invasion of Grenada. KAL Flight 007. Flashdance. Culture Club. Bang your head. Anyway, you get the idea. If everything breaks right I hope to attend my 40th high school reunion next summer. I’ve never been to one of these, and it’s definitely time. I have to admit to having no desire to attend the 10-year reunion. At that point either everyone is still the exact same as they were in high school, or they’re trying really hard to impress, or both. By the time #40 rolls around none of that matters nearly as much. I think that’s Buechner’s point here. Life is a continual evolution; what comes to mind for me is a building under perpetual construction until termination of the project. I am not the same person I was in 1983, or 1993, or 2003, or for that matter yesterday. And that, to me, is a very good thing. Like I said in a previous post, in some ways I feel like I only attained full adulthood fairly recently. I know I’m not the only one who has changed over the years. It’s kind of exciting to me to think about glimpsing how my classmates those many years ago have changed. Certainly, at this stage of life, our commonalities are far more important than any differences.
- Our Weekend Getaway - January 22, 2024
- So Long, Mom, And Thanks For All The Spaghetti - November 10, 2023
- Thoughts On The Chogaffirm Petition - June 3, 2023
- Rhonda - June 3, 2023
- Beyond Words Day 23 - April 4, 2023
- Beyond Words Day 21 - April 1, 2023
- State Of The Household - January 9, 2023
- Book Review and Miscellany Thoughts - November 18, 2022
- Initial Thoughts On My Writing - September 13, 2022
- Beyond Words Day 19 - September 11, 2022
