{"id":6,"date":"2014-04-07T03:06:00","date_gmt":"2014-04-07T03:06:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.theworldcafe.com\/whats-in-a-name-or-label"},"modified":"2015-08-16T01:57:39","modified_gmt":"2015-08-16T01:57:39","slug":"whats-in-a-name-or-label","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/theworldcafe.com\/whats-in-a-name-or-label\/","title":{"rendered":"What’s in a Name, or Label"},"content":{"rendered":"

A "Wiser Together" contribution from guest blogger Tom Beech:<\/em><\/p>\n

A little while ago, I received an email that caught me up short.  It was from a young, 20\u2019s-something, friend of mine.  He and I are working on a project together and he sent me a copy of a note he had written to another friend of his, a young guy he wanted me to meet.  In this email he said, \u201cI\u2019d like you to meet an elderly man I know…..\u201d<\/p>\n

OK. Well, first let\u2019s get some facts on the table.  I\u2019m 74 years old, in pretty good mental and physical health, retired from a long career but still active in my community. I can string several strands of thought together and keep track of most of them without losing my way or boring others. \u201cElderly,\u201d is not a word I\u2019d use to describe myself.<\/p>\n

I don\u2019t think I\u2019ve earned the status of \u201celder\u201d and when you add a \u201c-ly\u201d on, I get a little defensive.  To be fully honest, I get defensive in the face of judgement and criticism more easily than I should, but that\u2019s another story… I think. I don\u2019t label others or lump them into arbitrary groups.  For example, I don\u2019t refer to someone who\u2019s young and then automatically add on the word, \u201cwhippersnapper!\u201d Adding this on wouldn\u2019t be very useful anyway since most young people wouldn\u2019t have a clue about what it means.<\/p>\n

So, after taking a few deep breaths, I started to think about what I\u2019ve learned as a result of receiving this email.<\/p>\n

First, this brought home the fact that other people don\u2019t see us the way we see ourselves.  I see myself as active, healthy, interested in learning. My wife, Carol and I have been married for more than 45 years and we still find joy, excitement, love and fulfillment in being together. Every once in a while, I get the sense that our kids and others see frailty, lack of competence, lack of energy and lapses of attention that we don\u2019t either feel or experience.<\/p>\n

I\u2019ve learned that age doesn\u2019t necessarily bring wisdom.  Some of the wisest people I know are in their 20\u2019s and some of the dumbest are in their 70\u2019s. Truth be told, these folks were dense when they were in their 20\u2019s too.  But age and experience, if we pay attention to what\u2019s happening to us, and if we listen to the people around us, open the possibility of accumulating some wisdom. This of course requires us to be open both to those who think we\u2019re terrific and heap praise on us and those who question our every move and thought, without getting either self-congratulatory or defensive.  And what good is this wisdom?  At the very least, it helps us avoid making the same mistakes repeatedly, and if we\u2019re lucky, someone may actually listen to us once in a while.<\/p>\n

I\u2019ve learned that living at a slower pace is not a weakness. It allows me to pay attention, even in moments when it appears that I\u2019m lost in my own thoughts. The fact that others don\u2019t expect me to \u201ckeep up\u201d is a blessing because I can savor what I\u2019m experiencing, living with it more fully without feeling guilty. I used to feel that I was expected to keep all of the plates spinning, all of the balls in the air…all of the time.  That was exhausting and sometimes everything crashed at once.  Now doing one thing at a time or listening to one person at a time seems right, even if I have to ask, \u201cWhat did you say?\u201d often enough to exasperate Carol, who has the patience of Job.<\/p>\n

I\u2019ve learned that curiosity and failure are two sides of the same coin, and together, they keep life interesting. Curiosity may have \u201ckilled the cat\u201d as the saying goes, but it keeps me alive. I\u2019m learning new skills and exploring new arenas of information every day and one of the prices I pay for this is frequent failure.  I used to worry about failure a lot, mostly because I feared what other people would think.  Sometimes, my failures did affect others and in these cases, trying to avoid them was not just the safest thing to do, it was respectful and thoughtful.  But most of the time, the only person impacted was me. I still care about what people think, but now I realize that most of the time most people are unaware of what I\u2019m doing. They\u2019re busy just trying to get through their own days. If a tree falls in the forest and no one is around to see it….only the tree knows.<\/p>\n

The meeting with my friend\u2019s friend went well.  I learned from him and I think he enjoyed meeting me, even if he thought I was \u201celderly.\u201d<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Tom Beech is recently retired from a long career in philanthropy and is now active in his home community of Kalamazoo, Michigan.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A "Wiser Together" contribution from guest blogger Tom Beech:<\/em><\/p>\n

A little while ago, I received an email that caught me up short.  It was from a young, 20\u2019s-something, friend of mine.  He and I are working on a project together and he sent me a copy of a note he had written to another friend of his, a young guy he wanted me to meet.  In this email he said, \u201cI\u2019d like you to meet an elderly man I know…..\u201d<\/p>\n

OK. Well, first let\u2019s get some facts on the table.  I\u2019m 74 years old, in pretty good mental and physical health, retired from a long career but still active in my community. I can string several strands of thought together and keep track of most of them without losing my way or boring others. \u201cElderly,\u201d is not a word I\u2019d use to describe myself.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[26,18],"tags":[79,76,74,81,77,82,80,75,78],"class_list":["post-6","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-relationship","category-wiser-together","tag-aging","tag-elder","tag-elderly","tag-experience","tag-perception","tag-tom-beech","tag-wisdom","tag-wiser-together","tag-youth"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p6sDis-6","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/theworldcafe.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/theworldcafe.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/theworldcafe.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/theworldcafe.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/theworldcafe.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/theworldcafe.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":591,"href":"https:\/\/theworldcafe.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6\/revisions\/591"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/theworldcafe.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/theworldcafe.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/theworldcafe.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}