An uncle of mine went silver in his twenties. He aged overnight the way Marie Antoinette is said to have done, but without the trauma. He was a corporate lawyer and it hurt his career for a while. Starting in his forties, however, things turned around for him in a big way. He became the silver-haired eminence of a big corporate law firm and they kept him around until he was seventy-five.
He left his first wife and got remarried in his early forties to a significantly younger woman. He had the money and power to attract such a woman. She'd worked at his office. When he died, he left her a wealthy woman.
At some point in his thirties, he'd given up trying to hide what happened to him in his twenties and began cultivating the sort of presence that went with age. By the time he was in his early forties, he really had it down. I think that is very important. He was a lot like Grace in some ways. It's not enough to have the silver hair or the big breasts. You have to succeed at being the type and both he and she succeeded.
And a corporate law firm that has a convincing silver-haired eminence has a competitive advantage because for centuries, particularly in oral societies, the presence of wise old people was a healthy sign for a community. It suggested stability and continuity and we are all genetically programmed to feel good when we find ourselves in a group that contains a convincing silver-haired eminence.
My Uncle Stirling was the perfect embodiment of that. He even had the perfect name. I think that when we look at guys like him we forget how very hard it is to be what he was. Going grey in his twenties was a fluke to be sure but his life could have been very different. We might be inclined to say life gave him lemons and he made lemonade. But lemonade is easy: juice two lemons into a cup of sugar, add water, slice another lemon in and chill. Do you want pink lemonade? Add some red colouring; I use a little grenadine.
Stirling put years hard work into becoming the silver-haired eminence. Grace was the same. It takes hard work to be her. Don't believe me? Pick out a few hot young women between the ages of 15 and 18. Pick at least five. You don't need to get to know them or anything but you should be able to track their lives without being a creep about it. Follow them until they hit 21 to 23 and ask yourself how many are still hot. Then do it two years later and two years later .... for a woman to stay hot into her late twenties and early thirties is hard, hard work. That's why women who succeed at it it sometimes inspire such hatred.
My Uncle Stirling made some enemies by the way. His presence was a barrier to other ambitious types. Much the way the talented musicians in a band will sometimes resent the front man the fans really come to see, so too the guys actually doing the grunt work and in some cases the ones actually having the brilliant insights that Stirling spoke so convincingly to the clients sometimes resented him. I was talking to one of the young partners once and he loved the man. He owed his career to Stirling and had been mentored by him. But he said to me that, as much as he loved the man, he wouldn't have wanted to have had Stirling represent him in court nor would he have gone to him to understand difficult points of law. Neither of those things were his forte.
His gift was presence. That is a gift we under rate.
I know because I did it the wrong way once. I met a woman I'd known in high school once and she was thrilled to see me. I was pretty pleased to see her too. Caroline had been just one of the kids high school and university but had really blossomed since then. Some women get hot later and she was one of them. While we were together, we talked a lot about high school. Her recurring theme was that she'd been a loser in high school. Every time I tried to reassure her that she had never appeared that way to me, she told me that I didn't understand because I'd been socially successful.
I wasn't so sure but I couldn't see any reason to disabuse her of the notion. I'm sometimes really stupid but I figured out pretty quickly that the affair we were having was her way of reliving those years only doing it right.
I did okay for a while but then I blew it. Over Saturday Night Live of all things. One day Caroline made a pretty clever remark and I laughed. I told her she was funny and she said no she wasn't and it was just a line she'd stolen from Saturday Night Live. I was surprised because I never thought the show was that funny.
Caroline, instead of arguing the point, said, "That's because you had a life in high school and you weren't at home watching television every Saturday night." And I, without thinking, told her that no, I just preferred watching old movies and reading and I really didn't think Saturday Night Live was all that funny. And she resisted that and I kept arguing until I convinced her otherwise.
And then she lost interest in me. It was a stunningly abrupt transition. My whole value to her had been as a certain kind of presence. She felt good around me because being with me reassured her that she was now one of life's winners. I don't think that poor Caroline ever really grasped the basis of her then current success. Sitting around alone, she hadn't just watched television. She'd also read and studied a lot and now she had a career in a competitive field. She'd learned new manners and dress from her new peers and she was doing well.
The sad truth is that most people just watch a lot of television. Sometimes some old show will come up and you can watch people recounting every single scene in detail. If you think about it, these people are really telling you how much of their life has been spent as passive observers. That they are, as Caroline would have it, losers. A guy I knew once could do a pitch perfect Letterman routine. People thought he was hilarious. They were surprised when he didn't remain the social success we'd all thought he be when we left university.
It's okay to be a loser if you do it in a socially acceptable way. If you live in a social circle where watching a lot of television or doing a lot of shopping is acceptable, then you will be accepted for doing these things. You will also be accepted for walking around with buds in your ears playing loud music all the time. That doesn't change the future consequences of those actions. The loud music in your ears will make you go deaf whether that is a socially acceptable thing to do or not. It also doesn't change the fact that the sort of person who cuts themselves off from everyone by listening to music when out in the world is a loser.
All that reading Caroline did back in high school was, of course, a sound investment in her future. My Uncle Stirling also invested in his future. Not far in the future; just in the future, Whether we think ahead or not, we all decline and die. Stirling did and it wasn't pleasant. His wife doesn't remember him well now. She talks about a guy who was obsessed by his work and never was that interested in taking her out.
Grace invested in her future too. If you're in a community with attractive and sexually potent young women, then you're in a community with a genetic future. As a consequence, we feel reassured when we look around and see women of that type. Every company—as well as every political party, every restaurant or club—will have a competitive advantage if it has a few such women. If you are sitting in your local coffee house and you see an attractive young woman who smiles and is friendly to males, you'll feel just that much better about the group you are in. (And notice how anti-social, seemingly anti-sexual women are not appreciated—or even hated—no matter how attractive they might be.)
Not surprisingly, there is a counter-reaction too. We all understand the resentment and hatred of hot young women even if we don't feel it ourselves. Certain options in life were, as young Jenkins' Uncle Giles liked to say, closed to me at birth. The mistake we make is to assume that because it takes certain genetic gifts to become the sort of young woman who can trade on that we start thinking that is all it takes.
Yes, the future was limited for Grace but don't think she lacked prudence. The rest of us get a little dowdier with every year because we lack prudence. We don't think about the consequences our lifestyle will have for our body. Grace always had that prudence and people loved her for being what she was as long as she could manage it.
Stirling was no different. After he died, his wife did all the things she ever wanted to. She traveled all over the world. She bought clothes, furniture and a vacation house. She bought so much that she had to liquidate it all at one point. Now she lives in a condo her son bought for her. He lied to her and told her it was an investment and told her that she was doing him a favour living in it while it appreciates in value.
She believes him too. Either that or she hasn't asked herself any really hard questions because she knows she wouldn't like the answers.
Now when I think of Stirling and Grace I think of the virtue both had. Grace worked out all the time. She knew how to dress. Both knew how to behave in a social situation. They never met but I think they would ave understood one another if they had.
Grace was named for a virtue. Or she was named for a divine gift. It all depends on your theological perspective. Either way, she and Stirling had presence. We might even say they had charisma. For a while anyway.
We don't name men for their virtues or divine gifts. We cherish them just as much for it though. While they have them that is. And what are we supposed to make of our lives then?
He left his first wife and got remarried in his early forties to a significantly younger woman. He had the money and power to attract such a woman. She'd worked at his office. When he died, he left her a wealthy woman.
At some point in his thirties, he'd given up trying to hide what happened to him in his twenties and began cultivating the sort of presence that went with age. By the time he was in his early forties, he really had it down. I think that is very important. He was a lot like Grace in some ways. It's not enough to have the silver hair or the big breasts. You have to succeed at being the type and both he and she succeeded.
And a corporate law firm that has a convincing silver-haired eminence has a competitive advantage because for centuries, particularly in oral societies, the presence of wise old people was a healthy sign for a community. It suggested stability and continuity and we are all genetically programmed to feel good when we find ourselves in a group that contains a convincing silver-haired eminence.
My Uncle Stirling was the perfect embodiment of that. He even had the perfect name. I think that when we look at guys like him we forget how very hard it is to be what he was. Going grey in his twenties was a fluke to be sure but his life could have been very different. We might be inclined to say life gave him lemons and he made lemonade. But lemonade is easy: juice two lemons into a cup of sugar, add water, slice another lemon in and chill. Do you want pink lemonade? Add some red colouring; I use a little grenadine.
Stirling put years hard work into becoming the silver-haired eminence. Grace was the same. It takes hard work to be her. Don't believe me? Pick out a few hot young women between the ages of 15 and 18. Pick at least five. You don't need to get to know them or anything but you should be able to track their lives without being a creep about it. Follow them until they hit 21 to 23 and ask yourself how many are still hot. Then do it two years later and two years later .... for a woman to stay hot into her late twenties and early thirties is hard, hard work. That's why women who succeed at it it sometimes inspire such hatred.
My Uncle Stirling made some enemies by the way. His presence was a barrier to other ambitious types. Much the way the talented musicians in a band will sometimes resent the front man the fans really come to see, so too the guys actually doing the grunt work and in some cases the ones actually having the brilliant insights that Stirling spoke so convincingly to the clients sometimes resented him. I was talking to one of the young partners once and he loved the man. He owed his career to Stirling and had been mentored by him. But he said to me that, as much as he loved the man, he wouldn't have wanted to have had Stirling represent him in court nor would he have gone to him to understand difficult points of law. Neither of those things were his forte.
His gift was presence. That is a gift we under rate.
I know because I did it the wrong way once. I met a woman I'd known in high school once and she was thrilled to see me. I was pretty pleased to see her too. Caroline had been just one of the kids high school and university but had really blossomed since then. Some women get hot later and she was one of them. While we were together, we talked a lot about high school. Her recurring theme was that she'd been a loser in high school. Every time I tried to reassure her that she had never appeared that way to me, she told me that I didn't understand because I'd been socially successful.
I wasn't so sure but I couldn't see any reason to disabuse her of the notion. I'm sometimes really stupid but I figured out pretty quickly that the affair we were having was her way of reliving those years only doing it right.
I did okay for a while but then I blew it. Over Saturday Night Live of all things. One day Caroline made a pretty clever remark and I laughed. I told her she was funny and she said no she wasn't and it was just a line she'd stolen from Saturday Night Live. I was surprised because I never thought the show was that funny.
Caroline, instead of arguing the point, said, "That's because you had a life in high school and you weren't at home watching television every Saturday night." And I, without thinking, told her that no, I just preferred watching old movies and reading and I really didn't think Saturday Night Live was all that funny. And she resisted that and I kept arguing until I convinced her otherwise.
And then she lost interest in me. It was a stunningly abrupt transition. My whole value to her had been as a certain kind of presence. She felt good around me because being with me reassured her that she was now one of life's winners. I don't think that poor Caroline ever really grasped the basis of her then current success. Sitting around alone, she hadn't just watched television. She'd also read and studied a lot and now she had a career in a competitive field. She'd learned new manners and dress from her new peers and she was doing well.
The sad truth is that most people just watch a lot of television. Sometimes some old show will come up and you can watch people recounting every single scene in detail. If you think about it, these people are really telling you how much of their life has been spent as passive observers. That they are, as Caroline would have it, losers. A guy I knew once could do a pitch perfect Letterman routine. People thought he was hilarious. They were surprised when he didn't remain the social success we'd all thought he be when we left university.
It's okay to be a loser if you do it in a socially acceptable way. If you live in a social circle where watching a lot of television or doing a lot of shopping is acceptable, then you will be accepted for doing these things. You will also be accepted for walking around with buds in your ears playing loud music all the time. That doesn't change the future consequences of those actions. The loud music in your ears will make you go deaf whether that is a socially acceptable thing to do or not. It also doesn't change the fact that the sort of person who cuts themselves off from everyone by listening to music when out in the world is a loser.
All that reading Caroline did back in high school was, of course, a sound investment in her future. My Uncle Stirling also invested in his future. Not far in the future; just in the future, Whether we think ahead or not, we all decline and die. Stirling did and it wasn't pleasant. His wife doesn't remember him well now. She talks about a guy who was obsessed by his work and never was that interested in taking her out.
Grace invested in her future too. If you're in a community with attractive and sexually potent young women, then you're in a community with a genetic future. As a consequence, we feel reassured when we look around and see women of that type. Every company—as well as every political party, every restaurant or club—will have a competitive advantage if it has a few such women. If you are sitting in your local coffee house and you see an attractive young woman who smiles and is friendly to males, you'll feel just that much better about the group you are in. (And notice how anti-social, seemingly anti-sexual women are not appreciated—or even hated—no matter how attractive they might be.)
Not surprisingly, there is a counter-reaction too. We all understand the resentment and hatred of hot young women even if we don't feel it ourselves. Certain options in life were, as young Jenkins' Uncle Giles liked to say, closed to me at birth. The mistake we make is to assume that because it takes certain genetic gifts to become the sort of young woman who can trade on that we start thinking that is all it takes.
Yes, the future was limited for Grace but don't think she lacked prudence. The rest of us get a little dowdier with every year because we lack prudence. We don't think about the consequences our lifestyle will have for our body. Grace always had that prudence and people loved her for being what she was as long as she could manage it.
Stirling was no different. After he died, his wife did all the things she ever wanted to. She traveled all over the world. She bought clothes, furniture and a vacation house. She bought so much that she had to liquidate it all at one point. Now she lives in a condo her son bought for her. He lied to her and told her it was an investment and told her that she was doing him a favour living in it while it appreciates in value.
She believes him too. Either that or she hasn't asked herself any really hard questions because she knows she wouldn't like the answers.
Now when I think of Stirling and Grace I think of the virtue both had. Grace worked out all the time. She knew how to dress. Both knew how to behave in a social situation. They never met but I think they would ave understood one another if they had.
Grace was named for a virtue. Or she was named for a divine gift. It all depends on your theological perspective. Either way, she and Stirling had presence. We might even say they had charisma. For a while anyway.
We don't name men for their virtues or divine gifts. We cherish them just as much for it though. While they have them that is. And what are we supposed to make of our lives then?
No comments:
Post a Comment