Thoughts As I Reach 45

It is really hard to believe I am going to be 45 this coming Sunday!  As I think about that, I wonder, "where on earth has the time gone??"  This last year has been one of many challenges, but also of many triumphs, but I wanted to reflect on some things today that I have been pondering and that have been on my mind recently.

To begin, today I got involved in this really intense discussion with a former co-worker from some years back, and one thing that really irritated me about that discussion is the level of arrogance people have sometimes.  This particular person is a naturalized American citizen - she is originally from Argentina - and although overall she is actually not a bad person, she is also so misguided.  For one thing, she is enamoured with the big city  - the bright lights of New York in particular dazzle her.  And, she is well-travelled as well.  Her serious shortcoming though is this - she thinks the "best" of America is found in the big city, and to her the travels (or experiences related to them) make her some sort of authority on life.  I want to address this bad misconception briefly, because I have some reflection of my own that this sort of triggered.

To begin with, experience is a good thing in itself - we all have experience as part of our personal stories, and the experiences we have give each of us a level of incommunicability that is unique to us personally.  Over the years, I have become fond of that passage in Romans 8:28 - "All things work together for good to those who love God and are called according to his purpose."  This entails our experiences as individuals - everything we face, good and bad, is meant for the purpose of bringing us to where God wants us to be.  The compendium of that experience is what is called our testimony, and it is a precious gift.  However, experience alone does not make us intelligent (although it helps make what we are educated in more practical) but it must be accompanied with study, feeding the intellect, and also learning how to incorporate those things we learn into our own lives.  My friend misses this whole idea by infinity when she basically says that people who don't travel like she does are somehow not as "enlightened" as she is, and that is where she fails as far as the test of using her experience responsibly goes.  One thing about an individual testimony - it is not something you lord over someone as better than them, nor is it something you use to be arrogant or stuck-up with.  If you do resort to those measures, then there is a deficiency in your own thinking.  To explain how experience and knowledge work together, let me tell it this way.  A baby who touches a hot stove experiences getting burnt - OK, the stove will hurt if I touch it, in other words.  But, it must also be understood that at some point, that baby has to learn why the stove is hot and what makes it hot, and that is knowledge.  The two together constitute something that seems to be lacking in much of today's society, and that is common sense.  So, while experience is good, and much can be learned from it, it is also imperative for us to nourish our intellects in other ways too, and then make it all work together.  If you can do that, you are truly a well-rounded individual.  Also, this common sense helps in adaptation to a situation - the more you learn about what you both experience and study, the more useful it comes when situations may arise which call for putting those things learned into practice.  And, that is the lesson my dear Argentine friend and former co-worker needs to learn.  It has taken me a lot of years to come to that conclusion, as like her I was once young and cocky and thought I had answers to everything - I found out really quick that I didn't!  Now, at 45, I have learned to distill that common sense into something else - wisdom.  And, I still have a long way to go, I know - we all do.

This intense little debate with my Argentine friend did get me thinking about something though - it is that time of year when I reflect on what my life is, where it has been, and where it is going.   The older I get, the more specific that reflection becomes.  Let's have a recap of my own experience - here I am, from a small West Virginia town first off.  I have a diverse heritage, as I am simultaneously a descendant of Charlemagne, German Anabaptists, Conversos, American Indians, and French Huguenots, among other things.  Despite having a rich bloodline,  I also grew up with a single mother, and I grew up very poor.  Unlike many other Gen-Xers, I also went to a 3-room elementary school, and in high school I was taught Latin, German, and was reading things like Aldous Huxley's Brave New World, Alexander Dumas' The Count of Monte Cristo, and the philosophical writings of Reinhold Niebuhr (some of these kids today are lucky if they learn to read a comic book properly in today's schools, much less classic books like those!).  After accepting Christ as my Savior at the age of 16, within one year I was teaching Sunday School in my local church and was deeply involved in denominational affairs of my church at 18.  Unlike a lot of kids my age, who preferred KISS or Michael Jackson, I listened to Guy Lombardo, and began collecting vintage big band records at the age of 10 - by the time I was in my teens, I had refined my tastes even further to incorporate Stravinsky's Le Sacre du Printemps, Aaron Copland's Appalachian Spring, Jean Sibelius' Finlandia Suite, and Ravel's Rhapsodie Espagnole into my musical preferences.  I also grew up a part of my childhood having to use an outhouse (my grandmother's house didn't have plumbing in those days), acquiring a taste for groundhog, poke greens, deer and squirrel, and at one point when I was really young my mother and I were so poor that we slept in the living room and used the oven for drying clothes, cooking, and heating the house simultaneously.  Also, I have spent many a childhood night being warmed by a wood stove, taking a bath in a metal tub filled with water heated on that woodstove, and I had to split a lot of firewood and kindling.  At another low point in our lives, I was able to make sure my mother and I survived by raiding the neighbor's gardens - we ate a lot of fried cabbage, corn on the cob, boiled potatoes, and fried zucchini and cucumbers that year!  I learned from an early age too about what roots and herbs could be found in the woods for food or medicine, and I still to this day have a lot of uses for wild onions I used to dig up in the back yard!  In short, growing up was hard, and by all the statistics I should not even be where I am today - I have a bachelor's degree, am working on a master's, have three published books, and so much more!  But, by God's grace here I am!  Yet, I made a conviction many years ago to never forget the fact I grew up a poor, small-town West Virginia boy, and I came as far as I did because God ordered my steps.  But, there is more.

Over the years, I have had the privelege of meeting political activists, bishops of churches, famous authors, and even a famous Grammy-winning polka artist, and many of these people I still keep in touch with today.  I have also gotten to know a lot of fascinating people over the past 45 years of my life - I know Assyrians, Gypsies, Armenians, Lebanese, South Indians, Copts, Greeks, Macedonians, Slovenes, Serbs, as well as the stories of many of my own teachers and venerable old ministers, not to mention a few corporate executives (not overly impressed with some of them!) and the owners of many small mom-and-pop establishments.  I have memorized maps, encyclopedias, and cookbooks, taught myself how to cook like a gourmet chef, and I now know at least 4 languages that I work with on a regular basis.  I have accomplished much in that regard!  And, for my Argentine friend, I too have traveled - I have been to at least 25 of the 50 states, and lived in 5 of them, and I know my history well.  All of this is me over the past 45 years - I am (or have been) a minister, an educator, a paralegal, a culinary professional, a genealogist, a historian, and a budding theologian.  And, for those who may have doubts about what I say, I have a shelf of binders over to my left as I am writing this which chronicle everything, as I have saved every paper, church bulletin, everything - not to mention about 20 years of journals and 25 years of calendars.  So, I am also an archivist in my own right too.

This small-town West Virginia boy has proven many wrong before, and I will continue to prove them wrong for years to come, as my best years may be yet ahead.  I don't claim perfection, but I do know who I am.  My Argentine friend lacks this knowledge of herself - she betrayed that in her objectives - she wants to "liberate" herself from her past, and she wants to pursue dollars, and her affinity for the big city and the establishment has colored her perception.  It is really sad when someone like that goes that direction, because there is so much they miss out on.  Also, she shows a lack of desire for the real America, instead idealizing her version of the "American Dream" in the bright lights and big city life - what a rich tapestry she is denying herself, getting to know the small towns, the highways and by-ways, and the fact that diversity of the American landscape rather than the cookie-cutter conformity of the big city is what made this nation great.  Which leads me to some other things I am proud of too.

I am thankful for my humble beginnings, although they were a challenge - they gave me character.  I am also thankful for having two parents who are both Vietnam veterans who served their nation.  I have a good marriage, going on 23 years, to a great and godly woman.  And, I have legacy - a rich family tree, a meaningful story of my own, and the appreciation for my roots that continues to unfold the more I find.  But, through it all, I am also thankful that I have not been sidetracked by dollar signs to the point I forget who I am and where I came from, unlike so many.  Today, it is as if this culture wants to be severed from anything about its history, and too many kids are growing up dumber today as a result, not to mention being spoiled rotten by parents who failed to instill that into them - it is a scandal!  That is why I grow more thankful as I get older that I was able to document and preserve so much of my own roots, and I feel I am a better person for it.

I am also amazed too at how some people don't harmonize their thinking with factual information - this Argentine friend today was culpable in that regard.  We got into a discussion about the origin of the American Indian, and I brought up Dr. Dennis Stanford's Solutrian Theory (which states that the ancestors of the American Indians may have come from different places, including a part of France where they migrated to America over or adjacent to an ice shelf) and she essentially told me that due to her experience meeting Indians in Peru or somewhere, and externals, they are all the same to her.  It is interesting how people come up with this stuff, despite DNA research and other things by capable genetic scientists which cause us to rethink history every day.  This mentality limits people, and it is sad.  I only hope she does have common sense enough to examine the evidence for herself, although she thinks her experience is superior to reading the works of capable authorities who have researched this stuff - again, experience is good, but is not an end in itself,  I am starting to get into soapboxing, so I will digress from that at this point.

I have reflected enough tonight, as the hour is late and I am tired, so at this point I leave you.  As I turn 45 in a couple of days, I am anticipating another interesting year ahead as I continue a course I know God has laid out for me.  I only hope and pray the best for others as they follow their predestined course too.