David's Desk is my opportunity to share thoughts and tools for the spiritual journey. These letters are my personal insights and opinions and do not necessarily reflect the sentiments or thoughts of any other person in Lorian or of Lorian as a whole. If you wish to share this letter with others, please feel free to do so; however, the material is ©2019 by David Spangler. If you no longer wish to receive these letters, please let us know at info@Lorian.org.
I had an encounter at the hospital this past week that was both interesting and amusing. I had gone in for an annual visit with my doctor, and as part of my exam, I needed to have some blood drawn for testing. I obediently went to the hospital lab, where I told the receptionist my name and birthdate. I then sat down waiting for my name to be called.
There was one other person waiting with me. He was a young man, perhaps in his late teens or early twenties. As we sat there together, he suddenly turned to me and said, “Did I hear that you were born in 1945?” There was a distinct note of wonderment in his voice as he said it.
“Yes,” I replied. “I was born about four months before they dropped the atomic bomb on Japan.”
This time the wonderment was even more pronounced as he said, “That’s a long time ago. You must have seen a lot of changes in the world!”
“Yes,” I said. “Yes, I have.”
He paused a moment, then said, “What do you think of the world now?” The way he looked at me and the way he said it, I felt as if I were some strange curiosity, a time traveler who had suddenly materialized into 2019 instead of someone who’d been living through all those 75 years.
I have a whimsical mind, and I immediately began thinking of all kinds of witty retorts, like, “Well, I do miss my horse and buggy,” but I realized he was sincerely curious, which made me wonder how many older people he ever encountered. So, I answered him seriously, “Well, it’s certainly different from when I was born, but I like it.”
“Do you? That’s great!” And that was the end of the conversation as at that moment the nurse called his name and it was his turn to go into the lab.
It was a simple enough encounter. He wasn’t disrespectful or mocking in any way; he seemed genuinely awed at meeting someone who had been born so long ago. But it was the first time I’d felt like someone saw me as a stranger to the world because of my age rather than as part of it.
And it’s true. There are many aspects of the world nowadays that younger people experience or take for granted that I don’t feel part of. That’s normal. Styles, tastes, fashions, language all change over time, as they should in my opinion. Yet, I’ve never stopped feeling that this is my world. And though I’m part of it in different ways than when I was younger and healthier, I don’t feel a stranger. I definitely don’t feel the world has passed me by.
When the young man asked me, “What do you think of the world,” there were non-whimsical thoughts that flashed through my mind, too. There are a lot of things about the world that I don’t like: the way we treat nature, the way we can distrust and conflict with each other, the proliferation of misinformation and falsehood through the Internet, the rise of trolls, the changes in climate, the development of weapons of mass destruction, the mass shootings in the United States. I could make a long list.
But none of these things stayed in my mind, passing out of my thoughts almost as quickly as my whimsy. What stayed was the realization that after seventy-four years, I love this world as much as ever.
And thinking back, I realized that this is what my young questioner seemed to feel, too. His face lit up when I said I liked the world today. I think he was expecting me to complain about some change or other or tell him how much better things were “when I was a lad.” I’ve certainly had older people say exactly those things to me.
But in that moment before the nurse called him, he and I found a common sentiment. The world is good. I thought so, and I could tell, he thought so, too.
I left the hospital with hope.