HS #81 2022.4.14
Changing Colors
I heard recently that a common mistake middle aged folk make in planning for the future is assuming their interests won’t change. For the young, it’s expected that changes occur. One of the richest verses from scripture is Luke 2:52: “Jesus grew in wisdom and stature and in favor with God and man.” Getting annual Christmas cards each year, it’s clear (especially from the pictures) that attention and pride resides with the growth and development of children and grandchildren.
But once we become adults and pass into and through middle age, it’s easy to suppose that our interests and passions will remain constant, even if our bodies give out a bit. Indeed, as adults our desire is to remain the same. Middle age and beyond might be defined as that period of life where we are jealous of our former selves.
Poets certainly have expressed this thought. I’ve had this poem by Yeats on my refrigerator for years: “I thought no more was needed // Youth to prolong // Than dumbbell and foil // To keep the body young. // Oh, who could have foretold // That the heart grows old?” Yeats realized that our noble ambitions wane as we age.
Counterexamples exist. The great Hungarian mathematician Paul Erdos, the most prolific of the 20th century with 1500 articles, continued publishing until his death at age 83. Similar to the Kevin Bacon Number among actors, mathematicians have an Erdos Number depending on whether they coauthored an article with Erdos (#1), coauthored with someone who coauthored with Erdos (#2) and so on. Driven by his love of mathematics, Erdos described fellow mathematicians who stopped researching as “they died.” When someone truly died, he said simply, “They left.”
My 93-year-old aunt (Wanda Hendrickson) who learned how to roller blade at 75 and still takes classes at Calvin University is a personal counterexample and inspiration. Our regular visits provide an intellectual challenge.
Robert Frost also contrasted between the glory of youth versus the sameness of middle age in his poem, “Nature’s first green is gold. Her hardest hue to hold. Her early leaf’s a flower, But only so an hour. Then leaf subsides to leaf. So Eden sank to grief. So dawn goes down to day. Nothing gold can stay.”
Indeed, each Tulip Time reminds us that the “early leaf” – the petals of tulips – are appreciated just because we know they won’t last. In early May my front yard is gorgeous as the dogwood tree blossoms in pink and white. Then leaf subsides to leaf – to the necessary chlorophyll-green leaves which drink up the sun’s energy.
Garrison Keiller (Prairie Home Companion) once said he’d trade his entire decade of 40’s to be 19 again. As a mathematician, I think he was on to something. Since each new year of life adds just a fraction to the memory of our past years, an alternative way to determine our age is by adding: 1 + ½ + 1/3 + 1/4 + . . . That is, early years of life are the most colorful and rich, we learn more than in our later years. High school seniors missed much more during the COVID down shutdown than did us 60-somethings.
Mark Twain caught the idea with his usual wit: “Youth is so precious, it’s a shame it’s wasted on the young.”
However, nature has one more lesson for us. Not only is the “early leaf” colorful, so also is the autumn leaf, albeit for a different reason. The brilliant fall pigments of red, orange and yellow are contained in the leaf all along, but they are dominated by the green chlorophyll. With less sunlight in the fall, the unneeded chlorophyll subsides, and the other colors – just as rich but not as assertive – have opportunity to express themselves.
Similarly, as the passion of youth and focus of middle age subside due to changes in body chemistry and the accumulation of life experiences, perhaps that allows some subtleties in our personality – there all along – to be revealed. All of which shows that, indeed, even as we age, we continue to change – new colors, long muted, being revealed in our personalities.
Is death the end of this process? Are other colors waiting to be expressed? Even the most creative among us cannot imagine the other colors in the electromagnetic spectrum left of red (infrared) and right of violet (ultraviolet). So also, any color changes to come are beyond
ours to know and even imagine.
