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August 30, 2013
Time to pursue and peruse
Elders should be respected, allowed to assert their sense of self.
SEEMAH C. BERSON
As a young girl in Calcutta, I’d often spend time after school at the downstairs’ neighbor’s until one of my brothers or my parents came home. A Bengali family lived on the main floor and the grandmother kept an eye on me. She was a religious woman; this meant I could not touch her, nor she me. Once by accident, as I sat on the floor doing homework, my hand brushed against her. She right away got up and took a bath, as I had somehow made her unclean. Sometimes before her bath, she would braid my long hair and, when she did, the plaits usually remained in place much longer than when I did it myself.
Aside from the servant, she and I were alone in the flat. I must have been fed something to tide me over until my family appeared. She was an old woman, always dressed in a white sari (which meant she was a widow) with no blouse underneath; nonetheless modestly attired. This was her eldest son’s home and, according to custom, it was his duty to take care of his mother, which meant having her live with him and his family. This is veneration of the elders.
I do not know if it is still practised today, but it was a custom when I lived in India for some male believers in Hinduism/Brahmanism. On reaching a certain age or time of life, having raised and provided for the family, having lived according to religious precepts, a man is considered as having paid his debt to society and family. Such a truly religious man divests himself of his material possessions. With only a dhoti (loincloth) about him, bowl in hand, either barefoot or in chappars (sandals) and perhaps with a dundah (walking stick), he ventures into the world, renouncing family and friends and all things tying him to his previous life: very much like following in the path of Buddha.
Free from the material world, this man must rely on the goodness of others to put something in his bowl to sustain him – rice, a vegetable, a fruit, a piece of bread, for he is vegetarian and has never eaten meat. He leaves behind all comforts, all the books he has read and studied, all that was once normal and expected. He must depend on others but mostly on himself, for the journey now begins to look within. His strength will come from his spirituality. He is on a quest to find out who he is. Until now, he has not had the time and space to do this: the busy world impinged on his thoughts, demanded his energy. Now, at last, he is free to follow the path least trodden, where the lack of distractions and a simple life will create, hopefully, an environment conducive to thought: freedom at last to pursue a life of receiving and a different kind of giving.
This man is solely dependent on the benevolence of others. Therefore, one might ask, What does he give? Perhaps his gift is the opportunity for others to share, to do a mitzvah, with the resultant blessings.
Western societies do not ascribe to this kind of action at day’s end. It would take a strong-willed person to map out a life of such devotion to contemplation. It would be considered selfish and one would likely be called a loner, even an oddball.
As age approaches, finding solitude, peaceful, uninterrupted reflection, making space for the pursuit of matters cerebral, the discarding of daily repetitive rituals, becomes attractive. The gift of time and space appears so delicious but too oft ephemeral. Elders should be given the freedom, so to speak, to indulge in the contemplation of the navel if and when they so wish.
A contemplative life does not appeal to everyone and I am not suggesting a renouncing of interrelationships of family and friends; rather, that one be allowed the space to pursue diverse avenues. The desire to scour the nooks and crannies of philosophy, neuroscience and its advances, religion, Jewish ethics, art, writing, music – these are, to me, indulgences we seldom have the time to pursue and peruse just for the love of doing so.
William Henry Davies (1871-1940) in a poem titled “Leisure” asks: “What is this life if, full of care / We have no time to stand and stare?” As we age, we should be able to just stare beneath the boughs, if we so wish. Just imagine:
Time Spent Well
Sitting in the park
on a bench
warmed by the sun
mind awander
nothing pressing
no one stressing.
No watch or clock
nearby tolling
time’s passing
informing this
Elysian moment
must needs
be sacrificed
and relegated
to that which was:
a gossamer cobweb
soon forgotten
lingeringly still felt....
In the India in which I grew up (Calcutta, 1931-1954) and still today, to a large degree, respect of elders (all elders, no matter family or ethnic grouping) was paramount in the lessons you learned as a child. If we forgot or did not learn by imitation, we were promptly reminded. Children, youngsters and all those less in age than the elders in the room were expected to acknowledge the presence of the oldest generation first before greeting and socializing with others. In the community of Sephardi (Mizrahi) Jews wherein I grew up, we were expected to go straight to our elders, kiss their hands and receive their blessings by way of their hand being laid on our head and a blessing or two muttered in Arabic. Depending on your age, you might even be given a hug, a few kisses or, as they say in Yiddish, knip in bekl, a pinch on the cheek. Generally, this last was not a favorite of us kids and we soon learned to duck. Family matters were usually laid before the elders for their thoughts (and nothing was of too personal a nature to forgo this formality) and simchas (a new boyfriend or girlfriend, a marriage proposal, a pregnancy) were announced to the elders first before anything was said to the rest of the family or community. If not, it would be considered disrespectful and a surefire cause for a family feud!
However, elders here, when in the company of people perhaps 25 years younger, often find the conversation goes on almost as if we are not there. We are considered unlearned in the current vocabulary of short forms, our experience dating back to the days before cuneiform. Sexually, we women were so behind the times that I wonder how we and our grandmothers ever got with child, never mind raised children. A favorite expression of mine, first delivered to me as a kid of 8 or 9 by my brother, 11 years my senior, is: what I have forgotten you have yet to learn.
Communities must be mindful of their elders: our tremendous achievements, our contributions and our life experiences; our vast accumulated wisdom should not be all for naught. Painfully, at times, we suffer discrimination and are even reviled. What a terrible loss for our society! What a waste of human power and sagacity!
Why is it that, in our society, aging so often means the loss of self?
I am reminded of the Indian gentleman who joyfully gives up all his worldly possessions and, scantily clad, stick and bowl in hand, begins his journey filled with hope and promise; essentially becoming a mendicant. The beauty and lesson here is: this is not a loss of self but rather an assertion, a reinforcement of self.
Seemah C. Berson, born in Calcutta, India, in 1931, has lived in Vancouver since 1954. Married to Harold, with four sons and various grandchildren, baruch Hashem, she and Harold are longtime members of the Peretz Centre for Secular Jewish Culture. Author of I Have a Story to Tell You (Wilfred Laurier University Press, 2010), comprising the personal recollections of Jewish immigrants to Canada between 1900-1930, subsequently working in the Canadian garment industries, she is a freelance writer and occasional dabbler in art, children’s poems and stories. Her poem “Time Spent Well” has been accepted for publication in the Poetry Institute of Canada’s anthology From the Cerulean Sea, scheduled to be published in January 2014.
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