Many of us fear the relentless progression of our age. In addition to the existential threat of time edging us ever closer toward the lip of our graves, we intuit a loss of relevance in the process.

We sense that we are disappearing.

Conversations with peers shift inevitably into a discussion of our children, our concerns for the generation coming up. Our mood is tied to a consideration of their prospects. We’ve lived our lives, after all.

With God’s help and permission, we hit all of the acquisition milestones. We graduated, got a job, got married, and procreated. We’ve now started into our trajectory of loss. We’ve buried our parents, or will soon. We’ve lost friends and spouses. We may be working our way back from bankruptcy or addiction. We’ve lived long enough to anticipate the ups and downs of the carousel.

The ride has become predictable. Maybe even a little boring.

We stop dreaming. We stop playing. Maturity demands that we forego such pastimes. We settle into our routines, perform as expected on the domestic and professional front, and wear away the cushion of our favorite recliner positioned directly in front of a large, black screen that distracts and nightly reminds us to fear everything.

This is not maturity.

This is numbing complacency. That we took it as natural and expected for this phase in our lives is largely a consequence of the direction taken by our elders before us, and they the elders before them:

We will follow that which we found our fathers doing.

Q2:170

Our behavior teaches, more than our words ever will. While we fret and spit about all the things that the next generation is getting wrong, they are watching us.

They see our expanding waistlines and tired eyes that betray our lack of ambition and general hopelessness. They hear us grumble and complain to people who also grumble and complain. We court sympathy at every opportunity, never actually lifting a finger to change the things we so passionately resent.

We leave that to the next generation. We expect to inspire them with our indignation and disappointment.

I see this everyday and all around me and it is nothing short of a wholesale abdication of our responsibility as the Elders.

I am also incredibly fortunate. By virtue of my work with Dust and Tribe, I have been pulled into community with men and women who continue to dream and play. These are community Elders who inspire through a continued nurturing of their passion and trust in God. Each breath is a gift for them, to be taken in with gratitude and released with respect for the heart, body, and mind that are refreshed through it.

These are men who rise before dawn to pray before meeting one another to surf the breaking Pacific. These are women who shoulder the packs of younger men left puking on the trail. These are parents who keep gardens and tend bees and summit mountains with their children. These are the grandparents who cross the sea to camp with others three times their junior.

This is the company I keep, may God bless them and continue to bless me through them. These are men and women who continue to put a premium on their own growth and development, understanding that the opportunities for new knowledge and experience are infinite, but our time on Earth is not.

They are not neglectful of their responsibilities.

Quite the opposite.

A proper Elder understands that in order to discharge her obligations, she must be in peak form. She is the exemplar.

The role of the Elder in society is to offer permission by way of presence.

Dust and Tribe advocates for intergenerational engagement and dialogue. The company of our Elders legitimize our gathering while our youth challenge us to reconsider or reinforce the positions we hold. These are the dynamics we witness when each generation sees and appreciates the other.

But what intelligent young person would pay any attention to a jaded Elder who trivializes adventure? What is the value of our age if we cannot recognize the supremacy of experiential knowledge?

We live in a time of intense role confusion, a time when we are called to dismantle existing structures with no clear articulation of what it is we will build in its place.

This is made so much easier through the marginalization of our Elders, the keepers of our history, the repositories of our collective experience. Without access to this living wisdom, our youth are ripe for manipulation. They are flattered for their curiosity and impulsivity and empowered to create a world without consequence. They are too young to appreciate the absurdity of this and so they go along with it, muddying the waters as they go.

We Elders must not relinquish our post. We are obligated to maintain a regimen of physical, mental, and spiritual hygiene for as long as we are blessed with breath.

A proper Elder holds the line, even as he provides safe harbor.

“I was once young,” he says.

“See yourself in me, for I have been where you have not. Still, you are on your way and when you arrive, I will be gone.

“Hear my warnings, but do not heed them without question. Things are not like they were, and your skepticism guides me even as you listen.

“And what is greater than the words I speak are the steps I take to live my speech, so be with me.

“That is the way.”

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