: : : : : Life Lessons : : : : :
extreme edges of human experience.
He must have observed the respect
they pay to Elders, and he may also
have wondered why our society, with
its emphasis on youth, has been losing its intergenerational connections.
Wisdom Keepers may be his way of
bringing into being an Elders tradition
among non-Inuit.
One of the reasons to
keep wisdom, it seems,
is so you can pass it on.
when the life expectancy was 35, the
rare individual living to 60 would have
seen many more times of crisis than
the younger people. He or she would
have had a better idea of how to face
those dangers. In traditional Japan it
was the custom to tear down and rebuild wooden temples at set intervals.
So that the rebuilt temple would exactly resemble its predecessor, three
generations of master craftsmen were
always employed: the apprentices,
who were learning; the master craftsmen of middle years, who had already
lived through one temple rebuilding;
and the oldest generation, who’d been
through the process twice before
and could coach the other two. One
of the reasons to keep
wisdom, it seems, is so
you can pass it on when
required.
Many people feel
we’re living through a
crisis now. The young,
especially—those who have known
only the affluent times of recent
years—have been shocked by the global recession. They were fed a number
of accepted truths that turned bottom
side up overnight: that spending was
always a good thing to do, that a house
would always increase in value, that
the rich and powerful always knew
what they were doing. Not so, it seems,
nor is the present situation unprecedented, but those under 35 have never
lived through anything like it.
Perhaps it’s time for our own Elders
(our Wisdom Keepers) to share their
experience with younger generations
who want to know—and also need to
know—how to deal with hard times:
“This is how you stretch a dollar,
serve a leftover, turn a collar,” they
might say.
Or, “The important things in life
aren’t things.”
Or, “Keep your nerve. Don’t panic.
The only way out is through.”
Or, “Hanging your clothes to dry
doesn’t cost a cent.”
Or, “‘We’ is a more powerful word
than ‘I.’”
Or, “The human race has been
through the bottleneck before.”
Or even a simple, “We can do this.”
You’ve got your own list? Time to
share it—though, like a true Elder, only
when asked. ;
Margaret Atwood’s latest novel, The
Year of the Flood (the second of a trilogy
that began with Oryx and Crake) comes
out from Nan A. Talese/Doubleday Books
in September.
