Tony and I were waiting for a cab. The hotel doorman hailed the line of taxis, but there was a delay. When a taxi finally pulled up, the doorman had lost his patience and openly berated the driver.
Discomfort prevailed. For all of us. A few minutes into our ride, the driver let his frustration loose, "He doesn't know who I am. I was a doctor in Afghanistan, but now I can only drive a cab."
This man, a refugee, wanted us to know his story. It was the first political refugee I'd ever met. I think of him often.
In Daniel Nayeri's book Everything Sad Is Untrue, he tells his own refugee story through a fictional boy named Khosrou. Khrosrou or Daniel, as all the kids call him, shares his family’s stories before they fled Persia and landed in Oklahoma. His stories are as rich as 1001Arabian Nights and no one believes him. But all he wants is for people to know his story, his family's legacy, that he once lived among orchards, among wealth, and descended from princes.
When we age, we too become a refugee.
A refugee is defined as a person who has been forced to leave their country in order to escape war, persecution, or natural disaster. Only the first part of the definition fits: a person forced to leave their country or their comfort, or their youth. As we age, we enter a life of decline--a foreign country. There is no beating it. Marathons, vegan diets, and botox may seem to delay old age but it's a game that can't be beat.
So when we meet people who only know us with crows feet, gray hair, and orthopedic shoes, we want them to know our whole story. We want to be valued beyond our many-decades or our boomer designation.
I realized this when we had eighteen-year-old guests and Tony pulled out our high school photos and set them on the table. I realized this when a colleague brought a memory book of her teenage years to share with her students. I realized it long ago when my Grandma told me stories of skiing down the mountain or when hotel patrons used to flirt with her.
Just like a refugee in a new country who builds a new life, we too have to build new meaning and purpose in foreign-country-old-age.
We don't stop playing because we grow old; we grow old because we stop playing... George Bernard Shaw
and because we stop living, dreaming, planning, changing, loving, and becoming.
Yet, slowing down is inevitable. I find the remedy in Don Miguel Ruiz's Four Agreements. In the fourth agreement, he writes: Regardless of the quality, keep doing your best--no more and no less than your best. If you try too hard to do more than your best, you will spend more energy than is needed and in the end your best will not be enough. When you overdo, you deplete your body and go against yourself, and it will take you longer to accomplish your goal. But if you do less than your best, you subject yourself to frustrations, self-judgment, guilt, and regrets.
I had a 90 year old great grandma who couldn't speak, who mostly sat in a chair. But when she greeted me, just a child, her eyes twinkled and her smile oozed with love. She was truly, the best, great grandma. She was doing her best with what little she had to give.
Comments