Just listen.......

Getting older takes a lot away from us every day. 

Like our keys. Or errant cell phones.

And that word that slips around the corner of our memory banks just when we think we're on the verge of nailing it down, only to have it slither away again.

There are so many things that we can't do (or find) like we used to in "the olden days."  At least our kids don't have to walk to school in the snow like we did, right?

But age gives us things, too.

Like perspective. If nothing else, we have learned that life is complicated and messy. And there is little that we encounter that can be put neatly into a box with a label that never changes. 

Like speaking other languages here in America.

Someone said to me recently that they were offended by a young Latina singer always singing in Spanish. (Go figure.) After all, this person went on to say, isn't this America? Why can't she sing those lyrics in English so we can understand them?

Wow....this could take us into discussions about all kinds of heavy issues, right? Including the one about those outsourced customer service positions being held by young men and women in lands far away who are, well, less than proficient in the language of their customers. And the one about "foreigners" taking American jobs away, even if Americans don't really want them.

Well, it could, but that's not my destination right now. I think that's really a different point, anyway. And those issues are complicated and messy and serious, I grant.

I'm going to a much simpler place here today. I'm talking about music and diversity and knowing how to speak to one another, how to hear one another, even without a common language.

I don't need to know the translation of that Latina's words to "hear" her soul, the one she is pouring out through my radio or IPod or computer screen. I understand her perfectly without cutting and pasting the Spanish lyrics and having my software translate them into English. I routinely listen to another young artist sing arias in Italian, and I don't know a word of that language, either. But the emotion he is bleeding all over the airwaves raises the hair on my arms and brings tears to my eyes just the same. 

A young woman on a social networking site that I am addicted to--yes, THAT one--has introduced me to many new forms of music, most performed in languages I know nothing about. Arabic. Croatian. Portuguese. I am mesmerized. (If you can't find me, this is a hint on where to look. I WILL respond if you IM me.)  And I am grateful to have my perspective of life stretched in this way.

I speak only English, in spite of seven years of French instruction back in the dark ages of my high school and college career. Yes, I am a natural born American who has lived here all my life. But I am not offended by merely hearing another language spoken--or sung--in my presence. In fact, I cherish it, I cherish all of them. They add texture, and color, and brilliance to my perspective of life, every one of them. 

People are more alike than they are different, no matter what language they speak. Or sing. And our hearts have the capability of hearing each other just fine.

All we have to do is listen.

"......words have no meaning - people have meaning."

Larry Baker

Change, and then change again.....

Life is all about perspective, isn't it? We all have one, and it's often very different from the person sitting next to me, or walking with me, or looking at me with disdain as I navigate through my day.

But as we age, some strange things begin to happen. We either lose total sight of everyone else's right to even have a different perspective, or we embrace the fact that life is like a carousel, with constantly changing people and viewpoints around us as we ride those brightly colored horses labelled "experiences." I hope I'm in the latter group.

Last week I accomplished my "thing I've never done before" for the month, which showed me my city from a new perspective.

Here in Jacksonville we have an elevated Skyway that consists of a few automated cars that creak along a track through the downtown area. It was built sometime within the past 20 years, and I had never ridden it. (Which illustrates its usefulness around here, but this city has been debating THAT point ever since the little self-propelled car pulled away from the station the very first time.) I can remember when my now 28-year old daughter was a little girl, we stood and watched it on occasion, and said "We should do that some day." But we never did.

 So, downtown I went last week with a friend to ride the Skyway. I'm not sure why it was free (THAT'S a new perspective!), but we went through the turnstile and up to the platform. I looked down on the roof of the cars in the parking lot below, huddled like toy vehicles scattered across the dirt. We don't often get to see how dirty the roof of our car is, do we?

We boarded the next car that came by, not really knowing where we were going. I've gotten much better at that, too, as I have aged. I don't always need to know where I'm going....life has been so much more fun operating in the dark, too.

I saw the central plaza in the city from above the trees, and city hall workers on the 4th floor peering out at us as we rode by. We crossed the St. Johns River that runs through our huge urban area, and saw it stretched outside the windows, our ever-present reminder that nature is mightier than we are, no matter how much we try to puff ourselves up.

I saw myself looking at, well, me in the reflection of a passing building, an admonition that there are eyes everywhere, a lesson we all learn the first time we do something we think no one will EVER find out. And then we get found out. It never fails.

There weren't many people riding the Skyway, although we met a nice gentleman, impeccably dressed, who rides for entertainment every day. We encountered two young women (twice!) who seemed to be students, and were using the train to get to the college downtown. But their perspective remained focused on the little screens on their phones, as do most young people today. Some day they will realize that life happens elsewhere, but who am I to spoil their fun?

Perspectives change over time, too. Riding the Skyway showed me new views of the city I have lived in for nearly 30 years, giving me a new perspective of my home....at least until it changes again. 

Just like we do.

Trains running us down.....

Remember when we were in school and we had to learn to read timelines in some really interesting class, like history or geography? Time meanders along that line from left to right, the years and centuries passing easily, no bloodshed or angst along the way. Just like real life, right?

Oh, I don't think so. Hold up there a minute, OK? Our perspective changes daily anyway, but as we age we find that we're viewing our personal timelines from right to left, looking back along that line of bad decisions, joyous occasions, and just plain stupidity that have played out in our lives. The individual events on our personal timelines are different, of course, but I bet most of us over the age of 50 can look back along our histories and pinpoint places where we wish we had exercised a bit of good judgment or intelligence instead of...well, what we did.

I've become so aware of this, especially as my daughter matures and makes her own way. We see our kids headed like trains toward a stop on their timeline that looks a lot like ours did, and we want to throw ourselves on the tracks, stopping that engine any way we can in order to save them the heartbreak and trouble we experienced. We might have even tried once or twice, and sometimes they listen. More often not, though.

There is this human learning curve that seems to dictate that we tote around our own timelines, absolutely sure that WE won't fall into that trap, you know, the one that older people warned us about? Get out of the way, Mom, I love you but you didn't know what you were doing. THAT won't happen to ME, so thanks, but I'm staying on this track and I'll call you when I get there.

Unfortunately, THERE usually ends up looking exactly like a station I got stuck in once, too. And when they call, they need help to get the heck out of there. The locomotive ran them over and chugged on ahead without them.

In our culture, older people are not seen as having anything worthwhile to add to our lives. They're used up and worn out, sitting in corners, tolerated, or worse yet, ignored. When they talk, we nod and smile and discount them.

You notice I'm suddenly including myself in the WE. Because we were no different, were we? We refused to accept that someone else, and certainly not an aging parent or mentor, might have been able to save us from hurt and pain and expense. Intelligence skipped your generation, Dad, so thanks but I'll be on my way.

Until our perspective shifts to viewing that timeline from the far end of the darn thing, backwards through time already passed. Then, we find ourselves beginning a lot of sentences with, "If only I'd listened........" And the train moves on down the tracks.

I never expected that. I didn't aim for that. All I wanted was to get some nice pictures of trains at night.

O. Winston Link