Wasting It

Everyone thinks it’s hilarious in the movie Gran Torino when Clint Eastwood’s character pours out stubbornness and bitterness and complains about the young people on his block. It’s not quite as funny if you’ve ever witnessed this kind of thing in real life.

It seems like for several weeks now, I’ve seen and experienced pretty regularly, older people who constantly complain about the younger generation, or are so stuck in their ways that they are completely closed off to any kind of new relationships and any opportunities to share with people what wisdom they might have picked up along the way.

More than anything, this has just been very annoying to me as I’ve encountered things that have come up and I wasn’t really sure what to make of some of those interactions or how to feel.

But annoyance has given way to disappointment.

As an example of some of these interactions, there’s a place in the community that I often go with our consumers during work. For the adults with developmental disabilities that I work with, playing Bingo here is often one of the highlights of their week. One day during “nickel Bingo,” the two guys I was supporting were running out of nickels, so we switched to using five pennies instead. Understand, if these guys can’t use their pennies, they can’t play, and they go home very unhappy. We were quickly informed by the older woman that collects the change that we could not play with pennies. Me being somewhat carnal at the time responded by clarifying that five pennies were indeed worth the same as one nickel, and she hesitantly allowed us to play on for today, but just for today. And for the rest of the afternoon, every time one of the other people playing Bingo collected our change when they won, we heard varying exclamations of how indecent it was to use pennies during nickel Bingo.

You’re probably thinking, “Really Chris? You were that annoyed by that incident that you would spend your precious time writing about it?”

Yes, and for the record, you’re wasting your precious time reading about it. But you can understand how dealing with things like this on a regular basis would become frustrating.

But perhaps more illustrative of what I’m trying to get at was a day a couple weeks later at a different place in the community where we were going to play Scrabble. The guys had done this several times before and absolutely loved getting to spend time with the other older ladies that played with them. THIS moment during the middle of the week, when they got to play Scrabble with these ladies, was the climax of their week.

Well we got there and found out that the ladies no longer wanted to play with them. They were free to play games by themselves in another room but “this was their only time to get out of the house,” so they didn’t want any “outsiders” around.

The guys completely dejected, we left the site trying to figure out what to say to make things better and how to lift their spirits after they had all become abundantly aware that they were “no longer wanted” in that place.

I decided I couldn’t leave without at least saying something and trying to stick up for them in some way, so I gathered my thoughts, took a deep breath, said a prayer or two and walked back in there.

“So, is this pretty much not going to happen anymore?”

(Yes. We want this time to ourselves, and they don’t really know how to play. But they can go in another room and play something by themselves.)

“I’m not trying to be disrespectful here, but that kind of defeats the purpose. They can sit in a room anywhere and play games by themselves. It’s just an unfortunate situation because they loved coming here, and it was the highlight of their week because they loved getting to spend time with you guys.”

(But it’s our only time out during the week.)

“And I understand that, but it’s their only time to do this too…(silence)…Alright, well thanks for your time. Have a good afternoon.”

I left feeling good about having the opportunity to advocate for the guys and kind of call out the women in a respectful way, but as is usually the case, there was one other thing I wished I had said.

And that’s this…

You’re wasting it.

It’s not just about you, your time, your friends, your game. You have an opportunity here to do something way more significant than just play Scrabble in your little club and you blew it. You could’ve set that all aside and invested in relationships with these guys and done something so much more important than your piecing words together for an hour or two. You have so much to offer this group of guys and you could’ve shared in the joy that they get from spending time with you, but you’re too caught up in your own little world and you’re completely missing the point.

You’re wasting it.

The pages of the Bible are plastered with examples of older generations investing in younger ones. Older women training younger women what it looks like to be good wives and raise a family. Older men raising up younger men in matters of faith, love and justice. And more generally, people investing in other people and passing on the things that they’ve learned from those before them.

I love it when I see older couples worshiping in the “hip” venue with the loud music alongside college students and twenty-somethings. I love hearing stories of retired men who refuse to sit on a sailboat in Florida and choose to lead and raise up younger men instead.

And it should go the other way. Young people worshiping with older people in the “traditional” churches and venues. I know you love your loud music and cool, new worship songs, but don’t put the presence of electric guitars before relationships with your elders and the opportunity to soak up wisdom from them.

So I’m no longer annoyed (at least not as much) and I’m more disappointed than anything. Disappointed that we as the Church would put meaningless things like electric guitars and Scrabble before developing relationships with each other and doing life together, because there’s so much to be gained and learned when we put those things aside and seek to love and know people who are different from us. -CK