Intergenerational Learning

 

Right now I have the great privilege of running an intergenerational writing program for high school students and older adults (a.k.a. senior citizens). The program is a five-week series where participants work in pairs (older-younger teams) to create and share their life stories.

I was worried about getting youth to participate and so offered an incentive of a $100 gift card along with community service hours. In the first session, I could barely get any of the young people to speak. And I worried about the elders too. I feared that they would struggle to relate to the young people, perhaps feeling offended by their manners or their attitudes. But the older members of the group seem thrilled just to be in the space of the youngers. “I like the energy,” one said on our very first day.

Now we’re three weeks in and this intergenerational program is nothing short of amazing.

Each week we do some kind of team-building warm-up so the larger group can get to know each other. Then we break into pairs where dyads do some interviewing and some writing. Last week I had everyone line up by age without speaking. There are four teens and four elders. They dutifully did as asked and were surprisingly accurate in their lineup. In order, from youngest to oldest, they placed themselves against the counter along the side of the room — 14, 14, 15, 16, 68, 80, 81, 82.

For the next part of the activity, I invited them to choose the age they would choose to be if they could choose any age and reposition themselves in that spot along the line. The first fourteen-year-old said he’d want to be nineteen. He said he thought it would be a good age because he’d be older but still young. The second fourteen-year-old said she’d like to be twenty-two so she could be out of college and getting ready for real life. The fifteen-year-old girl after her wanted to be twenty-one and the last sixteen-year-old boy wanted to be twenty, “so that he could be in college but still get support from his family.”

The eighty-year-old woman in the elder group said she’d like to be forty. “Forty,” she said, “is when my real life began. It’s when I became truly independent.” The next elder to go was the sixty-eight-year-old. “You know,” she said, “I’d like to be exactly this age. I love being this age.” The eighty-one-year-old said that she’d like to be fifty because that’s when she felt like she was finally getting wise. And last to go, the eldest of the group at eighty-two, said, “I’d like to be thirty. When I was thirty I traveled the world. I’d like to travel the world again.”

“What a gift,” I thought to myself as I watched the younger participants listen to the elders. The kids could only imagine five or six years beyond their current ages but the elders had chosen a span of almost forty years. Forty years of wisdom. “What a gift for these young people,” I thought, “to hear this insight into what life can be like in the years far beyond their imaginations.”

Yesterday we did an activity where people shared things they liked or disliked about their neighborhood and the world. Every single elder said that they felt like their communities were too quiet. They missed the noise of young people— the laughing, the yelling, the wildness. And the kids complained about their own brand of isolation; they talked about feeling isolated, affected by crime or living far away from friends.

At the end of yesterday’s session, after a full hour of writing exercises, we closed the group as we always do with a circle where everyone shares something about their experience that day. The eldest participant shared a letter that she’d written to her partner, a fourteen-year-old girl. “Dear — — -,” it started, “the wisdom I have gained from talking to you today fills me with hope….” She read the whole letter talking about things she’d learned from talking to her young partner that day.

For his closing, the fourteen-year-old boy who’d shared his fear of crime in his community laughed to the group, “An hour is not enough time for this. We need a whole day.”

We still have two of the five sessions to go and three of the four youth participants have asked if they could do it again. My fear of engaging these young and old people together was unfounded, completely misguided. These pairings of young and old seem meant to be. They are like the Yin and Yang coming together to create perfect harmony. 

Learning to Fly Again

When COVID struck I had recently sold my business and was feeling newly liberated. I was intentionally aimless. I spent days by myself puttering around the house, taking walks, deliberately doing nothing. I did this by choice because I was tired of the rat race and I needed some peace and quiet away from it all.

When COVID reached pandemic status and I was forced to isolate and limit my daily activities I felt okay for a while. It didn’t feel that different to me. My teenage daughter was initially happy about the two weeks off of school. My family made lists and played games. For a little while, the forced isolation was okay. Then it wasn’t.

My partner and I acclimated. We found ways to be grateful for the quiet of our new life. We often relished in the lack of social expectation. We’d been buzzing around in the world for half a century and a little rest was just what the doctor ordered. But for my daughter this isolation was not welcome; it was torture. I watched the flicker in her eyes slowly fade; it was as if a chrysalis was forming around her budding wings. Her essential adolescent desire to fly was stripped away and she lay listless in her room for hours on end.

During those long months that turned into years, my daughter’s mental health was my greatest worry. I masterminded efforts to have a friend spend the night in warm sleeping bags on our deck, bringing meals and water and games outside for them. I bought heaters and umbrellas and a fire pit to encourage outdoor gatherings. Last summer brought us a little respite and my daughter and her friends finally gathered freely, without the help of their parents, without the fear that had plagued them in the winter months. They fluttered around the city, exercising their broken wings for a delicious few months.

Things have slowly gotten better and I’ve seen my daughter come back to life. But she’s not the same. That flicker in her eyes that dimmed during the first year of the pandemic has still not come back completely. And maybe it never will.

I hear stories every week about teenagers who are suffering — stuck in the listlessness that afflicted so many young people during the first year of the pandemic. Some kids haven’t gone to school in months and many, including my own daughter, have lost the academic musculature to stay the course with the school expectations that used to feel so normal.

I see it in my work too. Even though we are partially back to in-person, it’s so easy for people to call in and say, “I was exposed” or “I have a sore throat.” This will mean a few days working at home until they can get a test, easily a full week of isolating away from the team again. The ability and inclination to go into the shadows are ever present now. It’s easy to stay hidden. Isolating is what was required of us for so long that reverting back to this way of being feels easy now.

It doesn’t serve me to wish for things to go back to how they used to be, especially because I don’t think that the “used to be” busy-ness and frenetic lifestyle was the right thing either. But I do wonder how we recover. I wonder how we help our kids recover.

My priority is still my daughter’s mental health. I just want to keep her wings active until she flies off to college. Whenever I see a spark in her eyes or hear enthusiasm in her voice I am right there, cheering her on, interested, excited, encouraging. I want to remind her of that muscle, the one that engages in life. I want her to keep working it, strengthening it enough so that when I’m not here to cheer her on, she’ll still be able to fly.

WoWoWo Wordle

 

Wordle, our country’s newest trend, has definitely swept me up and in. Wordle is the first brain game I’ve been able to stick with. It’s finite enough that it doesn’t overwhelm me. It makes me use my brain in a different way from my default everyday activities, which, as I get older, feels like an important investment. It feels good to solve a puzzle every morning and I look forward to the next day every time I’m done.

Last week I was on day 78 of my Wordle streak. I was getting used to the idea that I would never miss a word. I was improving — getting words on the third try compared to my norm which is the fourth or fifth. But then, on day 79 I missed. I had gotten so cocky, so sure of myself. I envisioned my skills becoming so refined that I’d regularly be able to get Wordle on the second or third try. But in my rapid-fire word choice, I’d grown sloppy and lost!

Wordle is one of the first things I do in the morning and I know why. Getting the answer, solving the puzzle, winning the game is an immediate, palpable burst of dopamine. It starts me on a good path — one I feel like I can succeed on. And it makes me feel like I’ve accomplished something.

On that day when I missed my first Wordle, I felt sunken and demoralized. How could this happen when I was getting so good, performing better than I ever had?

I recommitted myself. I would work harder, think more carefully about my first word, and not be so impulsive on deciding to use a subsequent word that wasn’t the most strategically sound. The next day I got Wordle on the fifth try. Not my best, but at least I got it. I didn’t have the same surge of dopamine I’d been getting when I was on my winning streak, but I felt like I was recovering, coming back from the penalty box.

But the next day I missed Wordle again. And this time the blow was even greater than after my first loss. My success rate dropped from 100% to 98% and I felt rotten, like the true loser I really was. The dumb me came out of the shadows and swallowed up my confident, sharp, wordsmith-y self. It was a dark day.

I’m back on a streak — 3 days. I still do Wordle every morning but I’ve slowed down. I know that every line is a potential step closer to losing or winning. Knowing this, I take my time, contemplating all the possibilities before jumping into a word. I no longer rest on the laurels of my past success.

I’m grateful for the two Wordle losses. What they taught me is to think like a beginner, to always be trying my hardest, and not assume that, just because I was good at Wordle for three months I will always be good at it.

I can feel my brain trying harder, thinking about every possible word that ends in “m” instead of just choosing the first one that comes to mind. In not assuming I’m going to win Wordle every time I’m getting more out of the game. I am working harder, giving my brain a better workout. I’d call that a win every time, even when I lose.

Habit Stacking Ain't so Bad

 

I recently read Atomic Habits by James Clear. I didn’t enjoy reading the book — too directive and not contemplative enough — but I did learn a lot and I got some good ideas out of it. One of the ideas was habit-stacking, the process of starting small, manageable habits and adding other small, manageable habits onto those. Clear suggests making tiny lifestyle adjustments and keeping with them. This process invites significant long-term change.

For most of my adult life, I’ve been a seeker — always trying out new ways to make myself better — yoga, meditation, writing. I’ve taken loads of classes and read countless books espousing strategies for living a more balanced life. And I think I’ve been successful. At 53 I mostly feel balanced, nourished, and healthy. I’ve developed good habits that have stuck with me.

For me, balance always starts in the morning — whether it is a walk before everyone wakes up, doing a yoga class, meditating, or writing in the early morning quiet of my dining room table. At the beginning of 2022, I started a new set of morning rituals. They evolved organically, one leading to another until I had a stack of five. My ex-Catholic partner calls these morning rituals my “ablutions.” I didn’t know until I heard James Clear talk about habit stacking that this is what I’ve been doing.

Every morning I wake up to my dog Freckles sneezing and bark-moaning. Somehow he’s learned that sneezing followed by a few quick whiny barks will wake us up. Freckles’ desperation for his breakfast starts at random times, sometimes as early as 2:30 am. If we’re lucky he will delay his breakfast pleas until 5:30 am or 6:00 am.

I’m a natural early riser so I don’t really mind Freckles’ wake-up calls and I look forward to my morning ablutions in the kitchen. The first habit is to not look at my phone until after I meditate.

When I walk into the kitchen I turn on the coffee pot so that, by the time I’ve fed Freckles, I’ll have a pot ready. After Freckles eats he’s calm again and goes to his downstairs bed where he promptly starts snoring. I take my coffee to the tiny couch under the kitchen windows and read from my book of poems, a compilation of poems about kindness by various authors. I read the poem from the page I left off the day before a few times and then I close my eyes and meditate.

Often an image or idea from the poem guides me somewhere behind my closed eyes and I follow that until either it leads somewhere else or my meditation feels complete.

My next habit in the stack, and reward for not looking at my phone before meditating, is Wordle. After my meditation, I get my phone and open Wordle. Usually, there’s an idea from my meditation that’s floating around in my brain and I try to think of a 5-letter word to encompass that idea so I can use it to start my Wordle. Sometimes I get no letters but sometimes I get two greens or three yellows. On those days I feel affirmed that everything in the universe is indeed connected. I love Wordle — it’s a short sharp burst of dopamine to start my day.

My last habit, the one that completes my morning stack, is a one-minute plank. One of my high school friends turned me on to the idea and now I do it with my mom and one of my sisters every morning. I’ve just finished Day 26 and still, it’s not easy. I actually don’t enjoy it at all. But it’s a good challenge and pretty much the only time I engage my core or upper body so I’m going to stay the course.

I didn’t know, as my habits evolved from not looking at my phone to reading a poem to meditating to Wordle to plank, that I was creating a stack. But I see now that this is exactly what has happened. I get it. My tiny little habits have morphed into significant change. By the time my stack is over and I have to prepare for work, I’ve already had a full morning on my little kitchen couch. I’ve taken care of myself before I venture out into the world and spread myself too thin. Habit stacking. I’m a fan.