NEXT AVENUE - SPECIAL SECTION
Still Learning After All These Years By Barbara Snow
This essay is part of the Telling Our Stories series, featuring the voices of Next Avenue readers.
Former Secretary of State Madeleine Albright, speaking at the National Press Club in 2018, quoted Robert Frost, "The older I get, the younger are my teachers." Maybe Madeleine and I have the same teachers. Dealing with COVID-19, and the results of the systemic racial disparities in our country, while watching our nation teetering on a tightrope between democracy and authoritarianism, it would be easy for me to slip into a feeling of despair that nothing will be right again. But here's where I luck out. I live in an elegant, slightly quirky, 80-year-old inner-city apartment complex in Minneapolis, made up of mostly young tenants, many of them recent college graduates. A lot of them are deeply in debt for their education and work multiple jobs, including maintenance and cleaning in our complex. I've come to know most of these "youngsters," and while my first impulse was to share all 66 years of my life experiences and advice with them, I've quickly learned that they offer me much more wisdom if I just shut up and listen. For example: I’ve learned that those with the least to give, give the most. During the protests over the murder of George Floyd, I watched as they formed groups to keep tabs on what was happening in our neighborhood, stood watch through the night and then went out in the morning to help clean up the streets that were at the epicenter of the looting. They continued to demonstrate their commitment to humanity throughout the summer by cooking and delivering much needed meals to the homeless encampments that sprung up in our parks as a result of the economic disaster that unfolded because of COVID-19.
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