Mitch, a 37-year-old sportswriter, learned that Morrie, a beloved professor and mentor from his college days, was dying from ALS at age 78.  He decided to visit Morrie to pay his respects while he still could, which led to weekly visits during which Morrie shared the wisdom gained along his journey through life.  One day their conversation drifted into our cultural biases surrounding youth and aging.

“All this emphasis on youth—I don’t buy it,” Morrie said.  “Listen, I know what a misery being young can be, so don’t tell me it’s so great.  All these kids who came to me with their struggles, their strife, their feelings of inadequacy, their sense that life was miserable …”

“Weren’t you ever afraid to grow old?” Mitch asked.

“Mitch, I embrace aging.  It’s very simple.  As you grow, you learn more.  If you stayed at 22, you’d always be just as ignorant as you were at 22.  Aging is not just decay, you know.  It’s growth.  It’s more than the negative that you’re going to die, it’s also the positive that you understand you’re going to die, and that you live a better life because of it.”

“Then why do people always say, ‘Oh, if I were young again,’” Mitch replied.  “You never hear people say, ‘I wish I were 65.’”

Morrie smiled.  “You know what that reflects?  Unsatisfied lives.  Unfulfilled lives.  Lives that haven’t found meaning.  Because if you’ve found meaning in your life, you don’t want to go back.  You want to go forward.  You want to see more, do more.  [It gets so] you can’t wait to be 65.”

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As some readers no doubt recognize, this story is excerpted from the 1997 classic Tuesdays with Morrie, by Mitch Albom.  I read it shortly after it came out and have kept it close at hand ever since, but I hadn’t read it since deciding to become a chaplain.  A good friend recently prompted me to revisit it, and I’m so glad I did.  Morrie was an amazing student of life, which is what made him such a great teacher as well.

It has been my privilege to sit in Mitch’s place at the feet of some great teachers like Morrie.  When I was 25 and feeling like a misfit in my chosen profession as a mathematician, my wife and I took the summer away from my university grind to go back to a small town we’d lived and worked in for two summers in college.  My wife returned to work at a restaurant that she adored, while I tried fitfully to prepare for my dissertation.  We lived in a tiny cottage behind a home occupied by a retired couple whom we’d grown close to during previous summers.  Her father, Harry, a former Presbyterian minister, had recently moved into the house with them after his wife died.  Harry was 87, blind, and had spells of dementia, and they asked if I could fix him lunch and sit with him on occasion so they could get some time away.

This turned out to be a blessing for us all.  Harry had lived a rich and varied life and, like Morrie, he was a close student of human nature.  Over lunch, he shared stories about his experiences and the wide variety of personalities he’d encountered.  Like any good minister, he asked me thoughtful, open questions that spurred me to reflect on what I wanted out of life, and why.  He exuded gratitude for the life and loves he’d been granted, and he embraced the unknown that awaited him.  The saying “All I have seen teaches me to trust my Creator for all I have yet to see” crystallizes Harry’s perspective on life.  It took me many years to develop this level of trust in how life might unfold for me, but it took me less than six months to leave my life as a mathematician and move a step closer to my true calling.

But Harry was not my first great teacher of the wisdom that comes with age …

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I didn’t grow up with grandparents who were active in my life—three died before I was born, and the fourth was a remote figure who died when I was 10.  But I was blessed by the strong presence of Sarah Magee, who spent two days a week at our house helping my mom with the challenge of feeding six children.  GeeGee, as we called her, was born in the Ozarks in 1887, so she was already past 70 when she came into my consciousness and 80 when I entered my teens.  She was tender and yet a force to be reckoned with when crossed, and she remained sharp as a tack until her death at age 105.

Shortly before GeeGee’s death my sister Chris was visiting with her, and GeeGee was reminiscing about her early years—what a fetching figure she cut as she rode bareback across the farm country of southern Missouri at age 13 (in 1900!), how she caught the eye of the boy who would become the love of her life.  As GeeGee drifted off in reverie, Chris had the presence of mind to ask, “If you had one age to be all over again for a year, what would it be?”

GeeGee perked up and thought about it for a minute, then said “I’d really like to be 80 again.”  Chris, surprised and amused by her answer, probed for her reason.  GeeGee replied, “When I was 80, my body still basically worked, and I just wasn’t as stupid as I was when I was younger than that.”

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I was 37 when Chris shared this story with me, shortly after her conversation with GeeGee—the same age as Mitch Albom when he sat with Morrie.  I was excited by the thought that, from GeeGee’s perspective, I was still young and stupid, and had at least 40 more years of learning and growing ahead of me.  Today I’m 68 and happy to no longer be 25 or 37—or even 60.  “Older than I once was, younger than I’ll be—that’s not unusual,” in the words of Paul Simon.  

Still, I don’t feel I’ve yet reached the perfect age.  It’s a fact that my body will stop working one of these days, but in the meantime I’m trying to use this knowledge get the most from each day.   I am blessed that my life today is filled with so many teachers—including the people who inhabit the posts of Elder Chaplain—and there are many more I’m sure I will meet.  With their help, I can keep working toward the goal of not being as ignorant in a few years as I am today.  Now that is something to look forward to!