Yes and No

I have some of the tell tale behaviors of late middle, or yea verily even old age.  Fortunately, while I'm old enough to have some of these bad habits, I'm young enough such that after I've had them pointed out to me enough times, I can eventually remember to cease the offending behavior.  In regard to this latter, I've stopped re-telling some of my favorite stories.  Everyone seemed to like them the first five or fifty times, but now I'm getting that they're kind of old.  There's nothing like a look of pure tedious bored indulgence to clear up perspective in this area.  As a result, I've gone off looking for and even making some new stories.

One of the bad habits of old age is holding forth on how terrible everything is now versus how wonderful things were when "we" ("we" as in us ancient ones) were young.  I can't think of anything more apt to suck light, hope and life out of a room or a person than a pronouncement of universal doom from a throne of gray haired experience.  Maybe if our joints didn't hurt so much and if it wouldn't likely throw out our back, we could manage to kick the youngin' in the head while we're at it. 

At the same time, a half century or more or less of life will tend to develop perspective in anybody paying the least bit of attention.  Probably, the crucial thing that experience can teach the aged one in this context is to choose when, what and particularly how much to reveal about the days of yore.  The bottom line in my opinion is that it should offer some help, hope or direction to the listener.  In the current media driven culture, they've already heard enough news, sermons, warnings and pronouncements to last several life times.  After all, we didn't give them a choice as to when they'd be born.

Never the less, the perspective of elapsed time can be helpful.  I was raised by, in and around what Tom Brokaw has called The Greatest Generation.  One of the things that was culturally quite common as I was growing up was the importance of commitment.  There were many failures in this area, probably not a good many less than now.  Even so, the cultural norm was to embrace the idea that when you said yes it meant yes.  When you said no, it meant no.

I have a good number of relatives who said yes when their country asked them to defend their homes and even perhaps more importantly, the God given ideal of individual worth and sanctity.  They did not run away or shirk even when they were propelled forward in the direction of near certain death by horrible planning and decisions.  416,800 paid with their lives for gulping, embracing horrendous necessity and saying yes.

These and all those who fought, similarly said no to the elimination of the hope of personal freedom and individual value.  For this, we owe them our lives.

This passed on somewhat to my generation.  To our unqualified credit, we spoke an unequivocal no to the idea that one person was more or less valuable than another, based on skin color.  Many other battles, with perhaps less clear manifestations were also waged.  In those grayer wars, the direction could be debated but the commitment of the warriors was clear and preeminent. 

Maybe it's just me, but I find the past clarity of yes and no to have passed from public discourse.   Yes' and no's are nearly always conditional and of limited duration.  Life time commitments are sometimes wrapped in prenuptials.  Commitments made to employees are made to help them feel better; not because we mean them.  Parents abandon children. 

Even so I think we can, in chosen moments, offer our children and grand children this:  Let your yes be yes and your no be no.  Choose each carefully; count it's cost.  Accept the risk and pain these declarations bring along with any potential or real reward.  Equivocate, delay or decline but do not commit to something and then retreat from commitment.  Help them to learn what so many have suffered and died to leave to us:  Our commitments really do have value and meaning.