In my daily flying and fluttering, I tend to be wary of landing among groups of old folks. Too often they sit around, moping about “kids these days,”, or how TV, the movies, and videos are all trash and ruin morals. Seems nobody and nothing can make them happy. They sound like this song, sung by doomed English soldiers during the plague which affected British India in the 1830s.

We meet ‘neath the sounding rafter,And the walls around are bare;As they shout back our peals of laughterIt seems that the dead are there.Then stand to your glasses, steady!We drink in our comrades’ eyes:One cup to the dead already—Hurrah for the next that dies!No, stand to your glasses, steady!The world is a world of lies:A cup to the dead already—And hurrah for the next that dies!Can there be a more hopeless song of despair? Men waiting to die cheer the only thing left to them, drinking together. By announcing that the world is “a world of lies,” they block out any help from anywhere. It is as if they say, “Leave me alone in my great sadness. I don’t care anymore. Neither you nor anyone else can help me.”

Our world is not like that. In fact, it never was. Our world is always of great potential. If someone truly believes our world is a dead world of lies, then he’s given up and died before he’s stopped walking. How can some reach great age with such bitter hopelessness, while others wonder with happiness and anticipation at every day they have left?

The trick seems to be how they believe they fit in this world of ours. The saddest cases are that some don’t believe themselves lovable. Recently, a former Alabama state official gave a library presentation on a book he’d written. He astounded his listeners with his tale of surviving a sawmill accident. That accident revealed to him that love is what everyone seeks, whether they know it or not. You see, the speaker survived the accident because his father pushed him out of the way of a flying beam of wood, only to be killed himself by it. His “daddy” gave his life for his 14-year-old son.

This knowledge, that his daddy cared for him enough to sacrifice himself so his son would live, gave meaning to the rest of the author’s life. He knew he was lovable, despite everything. Despite often not acting lovable.

We can be that person who gives another person a reason to live. We only need to be a reminder that life can be very good, that friendship means something. Most often, that just means calling a guy to join you for a hamburger, talk about history, or loan him your truck to carry a lawn mower. Some VFW veterans got together to chop up a gigantic tree which crashed onto a neighbor’s yard. He wanted to pay them, and they wouldn’t take the money. A whole city-wide operation called “Empty Bowls” gathered money by selling local artwork. All the money went into food banks for those in need. Our neighbors gather clothes, vehicles, and housing supplies to take care of refugees coming to us from wars, where simple survival is a victory. The time and effort spent grousing about “this world of lies” is itself a lie. What nonprofit couldn’t benefit tremendously from your donation, of course, but your presence and physical assistance especially.

I guess we often feel down and lonely and unhappy. Surely we Owls know this. But it doesn’t mean the end of the world. In fact, it can signal a new beginning, having learned something from the past, and made us stronger, or wiser, or more alert to our world. This is what age should bring — not sorrow, bitterness, and anger. We can share our experiences with younger people and save them having to go through a bad experience themselves. They can learn from us. Or we can learn from the young. In this Owl’s life I’ve met dozens of young people from all around the world. They are people of imagination, inventiveness, and wisdom who make our world a better place. They keep a good attitude. No bleak future should ever cause us to give up. Pete Seeger reminded us in this song from the 1960s of a truth discovered 3,000 years before that. He wrote, quoting Ecclesiastes:

To Everything (Turn, Turn, Turn)

There is a season (Turn, Turn, Turn)

And a time to every purpose, under Heaven

A time to be born, a time to die

A time to plant, a time to reap

A time to kill, a time to heal

A time to laugh, a time to weep

There’s a season for everything. Encourage one another.