More than any other country on earth, America worships youth. Wisdom, generosity and experience seem to lag far behind the visual appeal of a person who is young and possessor of charisma attractive to the eye and worthy of envy from one who has silver, white, or no hair.
I suspect that most of us who are past the age of sixty may be envious of those who are enjoying (aware or not) of the years that we elderly can only remember from old photo albums or home movies. In America, wisdom and experience are less valuable than physical stamina and eye appeal. I’m not sure that this has always been the case throughout history, but I suspect that it became much more powerful during the 1920’s when movies began their powerful influence based upon wealth, power and physical appearance.
It often takes time to appreciate the wisdom of the elderly and their vast experience, because current culture demands speed and easy access to almost any level of insight and intelligence which, in importance, often lag behind our need for eye appeal, which can too easily disappoint us when there is little or nothing behind it.
Speed governs much of what we do. I believe the result over time has shortened our attention spans and diminished our ability to be sympathetic and patient. The greatest fear for the young of the current era is boredom from anything or anyone taking too long. For those of us fortunate enough to reach “old age,” we will need to understand the factor of speed that increases little by little so that finally, haste becomes our master as sympathy and patience diminish. JB
About John
About John
John Bolinger was born and raised in Northwest Indiana, where he attended Ball State University and Purdue University, receiving his BS and MA from those schools. Then he taught English and French for thirty-five years at Morton High School in Hammond, Indiana before moving to Colorado, where he resided for ten years before moving to Florida. Besides COME SEPTEMBER, Journey of a High School Teacher, John's other books are ALL MY LAZY RIVERS, an Indiana Childhood, and COME ON, FLUFFY, THIS AIN'T NO BALLET, a Novel on Coming of Age, all available on Amazon.com as paperbacks and Kindle books. Alternately funny and touching, COME SEPTEMBER, conveys the story of every high school teacher’s struggle to enlighten both himself and his pupils, encountering along the way, battles with colleagues, administrators, and parents through a parade of characters that include a freshman boy for whom the faculty code name is “Spawn of Satan,” to a senior girl whose water breaks during a pop-quiz over THE LAST OF THE MOHICANS. Through social change and the relentless march of technology, the human element remains constant in the book’s personal, entertaining, and sympathetic portraits of faculty, students, parents, and others. The audience for this book will certainly include school teachers everywhere, teenagers, parents of teens, as well as anyone who appreciates that blend of humor and pathos with which the world of public education is drenched. The drive of the story is the narrator's struggle to become the best teacher he can be. The book is filled with advice for young teachers based upon experience of the writer, advice that will never be found in college methods classes.
Another of John's recent books is Mum's the Word: Secrets of a Family. It is the story of his alcoholic father and the family's efforts to deal with or hide the fact. Though a serious treatment of the horrors of alcoholism, the book also entertains in its descriptions of the father during his best times and the humor of the family's attempts to create a façade for the outside world. All John's books are available as paperbacks and Kindle readers on Amazon, and also as paperbacks at Barnes & Noble. John's sixth book is, Growing Old in America: Notes from a Codger was released on June 15, 2014. John’s most recent book is a novel titled Resisting Gravity, A Ghost Story, published the summer of 2018
View all posts by John →
