Accepting Our Mixed Feelings about Children – Loraine’s Lesson

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Loraine Bauer, 89, was married at age 15 and had three children before she was twenty.

I was much too young because it meant that I was not a very good mother.  You know you love them and you do the best you can, but I didn’t know about being a mother.  I never even held a baby until I held my first baby.  And contrary to what most people would think, I was not pregnant when I was married.  She wasn’t born until fourteen months after we had this marriage.  But that was much too young, even though I married a good person.  He was to the best of his ability a kind and loving husband and father but we wound up divorced when the kids were still little.

You know they’re beautiful children, beautiful physically.  They have also grown into beautiful people.  And I guess hell, they must have gotten that from somewhere, wouldn’t you think?  I must have done something right.  One thing is that I would design and make beautiful clothes.  And even for my little son.

And I remember one day – you probably have events that for no particular reason memories that staywith you. Well, maybe you don’t.  Maybe you’re not old enough, I don’t know, to have all that many memories.  But I remember one Saturday afternoon.

We lived way away from any grocery stores or anything like that.  My husband would hitch up the mule and buggy and drive two miles to pick up the week’s supply of groceries.  And I remember one day he was taking our little son with him who must have been about two years old.  And I had made him this lovely little white shirt and a little pair of short brown pants with suspenders that buttoned over him.  And he was sitting there on the wagon seat beside his father.

If you don’t have children, when you have them you will have these moments.  When you look at them and your heart – it’s like your heart takes all the pain and all the love for them that you have because he looked so beautiful sitting there beside Daddy.

Overcoming Obstacles for Success – Advice from Grace

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We learned a lot from Grace, age 79, who learned never to give up on a dream.

Grace raised her children in Brooklyn, where she still resides with her husband. Throughout childrearing, Grace embedded the importance of education in her children’s minds, and encouraged them to use family trips as inspiration for school reports and assignments. Grace’s strong belief in education led her to found a school in her neighborhood.

To this day, Grace is the principal of the school and actively works with the children to ensure they receive the highest education possible. Grace’s early struggle – but ultimate success – in getting the school up and running is a testament to the willpower she exemplifies.

Grace ran into a few obstacles along the way. Despite the setbacks, her desire to provide a place of enrichment for children helped her overcome the struggles. Grace told us:

Do not let anybody tell you you can’t do it. If you feel you can do something and you’re positive about it, whatever the business is, if you believe in yourself and you think you can do it, you will do it.

And Grace didn’t let anyone tell her she “couldn’t do it!” When the building she wanted for her school was too expensive, she figured out a long-term payment plan with the landlord. When the city objected to the use of the building, Grace went to directly to the mayor and got his permission. When Grace found out she needed more education to run the school, she went back for her masters degree. Her belief in herself and desire to start this school led her to take action and build the establishment that still exists today.

Grace’s determination deemed benefits for the entire city of Brooklyn. Grace explained:

 It took me five years to get out of debt. But I didn’t care. I got my school. It was licensed and it was the best thing I ever did…If you were going to buy a house today and you wanted to make a school out of it, you would call downtown and use the precedence of my school! I set a precedent in the whole city. Now anyone who wants to turn a house into a nursery school just needs to follow what I did and the city can’t deny them.

 Grace also emphasized the need to choose a career for its intrinsic rewards: “You have to love what you do. You cannot be in any business if you don’t have a feeling of fulfillment and it’s only for money.” She told us that the feeling she receives when her three-year old students begin to read is defined as fulfillment. She does not work for the money—instead, she does it because she loves it. And Grace  truly practices what she preaches. Just as much as she loves instilling information in young children, she also enjoys enriching herself, and learning new things. After her first initial bachelor’s degree, Grace went on to receive a Ph.D.

If that is not genuine love for education and her profession, then I don’t know what is!

Don’t Worry about What Everyone Else Thinks

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Winona, 72, tells younger people that they need to be true to themselves, rather than trying to please everyone else.

The biggest lesson I have learned is that when I was younger I paid much too much attention to what everybody else thought. I didn’t always do what I thought was best. Instead, I often did what everybody else thought I should be doing. And every time I stood my ground and did what I thought I ought to be doing, I did better and things went better. I cared too much about what other people thought about my profession and about me as a person. I think that’s the biggest lesson and it spills over into so many different things.

And that led me to another another life lesson: that following the rules doesn’t always get you where you want to go. There are ways of staying within the boundaries of legality without following every single rule that your mother laid down for you. Sometimes rules are meant to be broken and I think I paid a little too much attention to the rules. They got me quite far, but I think I would have gotten much farther had I not paid attention to the rules, not caring whether people like what you are doing.

“Suck it up and get on with life!” Marty’s Lessons

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One key component of elder wisdom has come up often on this blog:  That happiness is a choice, and not a condition. Over and over, respondents in the Legacy Project told us that life invariably involves loss and difficulties. However, individuals can make a conscious choice to make the best of their circumstances – even when the circumstances aren’t ideal.

Marty, 82, is a retired college professor. He’s gone through the loss of his first wife in his mid-60s and is now in a very happy second marriage. Marty emphasizes the importance of choosing to be optimistic and as cheerful as possible:

I think you have to be enthusiastic about things and not be grumbly about everything. I always follow the idea that, well, today’s today, and if today doesn’t go well I’ll try it again tomorrow. I think that’s very, very important.

My first wife died and I was really down, I would have to say. And then I woke up one morning and I said to myself, “You know George, what you always used to say to your students when something happened was “Suck it up and get on with life!” And, to me it was amazing that I didn’t tell myself the same thing. But I did it that morning. That was in 1995, and on that day I decided I still was young enough to do things – and I did! I think we all doubt when we get to certain ages that we can do it anymore. But you can still make a difference to people.

I believe that lots of people are not very flexible. And I think sometimes you have to be flexible in order to continue to have a good life and continue to do the things where you can help people.

So I decided that although I was older when my wife died, I wasn’t going to give up. I hadn’t dated anybody in forty years, so it was going to be hard.. But, I think you have to say to yourself, “Look, life goes on.” There are lots of things that’ll happen to you that you’ll have to overcome whether you’re twenty or thirty or forty; it doesn’t matter. You have to move on.

So tell people to remember that it’s never too late, it’s never too late to change and it’s okay to change.

A Lesson from a 105-Year-Old!

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  We asked younger people the question: What’s one thing you have learnedfrom an elder in your life?” We loved the answer from Julia:

My beloved and inspirational grandmother, Eula Mae, passed away at the amazing age of 105 years old. For the past five years, since she turned 100, I often heard people ask her for her advice on how to live a satisfying life to such an old age.

The advice I most often heard her give to people was “Be happy with what you’ve got!” She grew up quite poor, and worked hard during her life, and she was married to the love of her life for sixty years before he died over twenty years ago. She had three children, two of whom she outlived, and she was grateful for every blessing she had, and never complained about anything!

She thought it was “such a shame” that people today seem to always be wanting more and searching for happiness, instead of enjoying the moments and “being happy with what they got!” I think of her often, and am trying to heed her wisdom and pass it on to my own children.

First Job? Learn from the Bad Stuff!

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Many new grads will be starting their first real jobs in a few months, perhaps after a bit of well-deserved time off. The Legacy Project elders told us that you may be stuck initially in work that is less than idea (many had not-so-great jobs during their lives).

They have an important piece of advice for that situation: Treat a bad job as a learning experience.

Sam Winston, 81, trained as an engineer but also worked in marketing and as a general manager. He attributes his considerable career success specifically to his ability to learn from jobs he didn’t like. The key, he says, is to see them as learning experiences and to take advantage of any opportunity to gather knowledge about an industry or occupation.

One important thing for young people is to be observant. No matter what the task is, whether you like it or not, it’s very important to learn everything you can about what’s happening around you. You never know when that may be of great value later.

I’ve had many different experiences throughout my life where I really didn’t like what I had to do and I would feel what I was doing was inconsequential. But the lessons I learned doing those things played an important part in my life.

For example, I had to work my way through college, in many jobs you may consider meaningless. Later on they were very valuable for me as an employer, to help me understand my people. I would tell younger people that no matter what the experience is — learn. See what’s happening.

Never, Ever Give Up on Finding Love: Here’s Why.

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Valentine’s Day can be a very difficult day indeed for people frustrated in finding a relationship. And it can be easy, after Never give up on loveyears of looking, to fall into disillusionment or even despair.

However, the message I received from my interviews with hundreds of elders with lifetimes of experience in and out of relationships is this:

Never give up on finding love.

The best way I can convey this message is with an example.

Kitty was an adventurous, exciting young woman. She joined the women’s naval corps (the WAVES) and served during World War II. She met her husband after the war and they were married for 60 years, experiencing life’s ups and downs, traveling the country, living a very good life. Kitty cared for her husband in his last years, and said a final goodbye in her late 80s.

Although she deeply wanted a new relationship, she assumed that the love and romance part of her life was over.

But she was in for a surprise. To find out what happened, listen to her tell the story.

Spend More Time in the Slow Lane

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Wonderful advice from Rick, age 80. Maybe this can be a New Year’s resolution?

Spend more time in the slow lane. Everything looks better and the rewards are greater. You get a much better perspective and a sense of accomplishment in enjoying the little pleasures that life has to offer. Savor the journey; there is a greater likelihood the pathway will provide the rewards that may elude you at the end.

You don’t have to do something special every day, but there are a myriad of ways that you can make everyday special.

Embrace intimacy. Don’t be afraid to let those close to you know how you feel and what makes the relationship work. Learn the difference between sex and true intimacy. Most people are capable of sex, but fewer make the effort to enjoy a deep sense of connection.

Don’t be afraid to make lifestyle changes that enhance your quality of life. Listen to your body and make changes that can increase your chances of being dealt a winning hand. There are no guarantees in life; do everything in your power to stack the deck in your favor.

Have Faith – But How You Do It Is Up to You

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I wasn’t surprised that the elders often profess a very deep faith in God. But I was struck by the degree to which they also stressed tolerance for the beliefs of others. Over and over, they reported that a spiritual life is important, but the form it takes is up to you.

Grace, 84: Well, it all depends on your denomination. Regardless of whether we bow to the east or west or whatever, there’s only one guy up there. We just have to have that faith. Faith gets difficult sometimes because we’re a species that likes instant gratification and solutions, and life is not about that. So we have to have faith. Also, don’t do wrong things for the sake of religion.

Ruth, 83: My parents were religious Jews, nothing Orthodox like that, but they observed the Sabbath and the meat was Kosher, you know. But we always had Christian friends, we had Jewish friends. My parents weren’t that tight, you know, they accepted anybody- “I don’t care what you are, you’re a nice person.”  Thank you Mama and Papa, because this is what they taught me. The thing is that if there’s a God, there’s only one God. There can only be one God. And everybody prays in a different way. Tolerance is very important. Especially since the way that I grew up, and the fact that we had Christian friends.

Oscar, 76: Well, I have very strong feelings about my faith but I would not impose them upon other people, that’s strictly a one on one decision between them and God or whatever they choose to worship. I observe one school of thought and that’s very real to me and it would be up to everybody else to come to that same decision or a different one, so they would choose. But I think that everybody should believe in, preferably what I believe in, but then that’s not likely. But you should have something to center your life on, to sustain you.

Juanita, 71: We all have to believe in something, I think, and whether you’re Catholic or Protestant, it doesn’t really matter to me, there’s God. And how you get to Him through Catholicism, Judaism, it really doesn’t matter, but just to believe in something. We just didn’t appear, you know? I think faith is important because we have to realize there is a higher being, just look around, look at life itself, so everybody should have something to believe in.

Among the 1200 elders we interviewed for the book 30 Lessons for Living, only a small number had no use for spirituality or religion; faith of some kind was seen as a key to happiness by almost everyone. But what seems to grow in old age is a sense of tolerance for others’ beliefs, and a sense that there are many paths to spiritual fulfillment.

Don’t Rush into Marriage

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The elders have seen many people rush into marriage – and they believe that’s a big mistake. They exhort us to think twice, three times, or however many times it takes before you take the step into marriage. Investigate it more thoroughly than any other decision, weigh your options, and in particular examine your motives. If you are doing it for the wrong reasons, you have every reason to wait.

Henry, 82, told me:

I don’t know what set of rules or guidelines to use to ascertain who is the best life partner for you, but don’t be hasty, take your time. Let the partner know you’re taking your time. Invite the partner also to take his or her time. Don’t be hasty, try to avoid pitfalls down the road.

If you take your time you can at least be somewhat surer of selecting a life mate correctly and not capriciously. This can let you avoid the business of divorce or separation – divorce is a very unpleasant process. So try to be very selective in your life partner early on and avoid if possible the trauma and the unpleasantness associated with divorce.

Roxanne, 74, urges people to fight the urge to get married just because “everyone else is doing it”:

Of course, you have to pick the right person. When I married my husband he was – well I just felt there was nobody like him. And I wanted to feel that way the rest of my life. Because of the way I felt about him, I wanted to be a good wife, good mother, good grandmother, and so far God has allowed me to be that. I just think you have to have a lot of love, true love. But what a lot of young people don’t know these days is what true love is and what commitment is. And when they say, “I do,” what it is they are really saying? Younger people think they have to get married because somebody else got married, one of their friends got married, or whatever. That’s not what it’s all about. And that is a serious mistake.

Rushing to quickly into marriage was one of the major regrets expressed by the elders in 30 Lessons for Living. So it’s worth thinking twice (or more) before saying “I do!”