by Christopher Cudworth

Learning to turn even bad things in the past into good experience is the art of life.

In the television show LOST, all the main characters learned through hard experience that the past really can catch up to you. The mind-bending mixture of time travel juxtaposed with the consequences of short-term choices made plenty of people think harder about the present and whether the past could indeed catch up with you.

If we have done something bad in the past it can still be forgotten over time. We learn to forgive ourselves somehow or another. Or Jesus does. The past does not need to catch up with you for every wrong you’ve ever done.

But what about the things you’ve done right in the past? Do you need to forget those too?

Passing on the past

Some people seem to think so. They no more want to entertain discussion of the past than they want to have their teeth pulled without painkillers. Some find the past insufferable. Even the recent past. Insufferable. Don’t bother them with things that happened an hour, a week or 50 years ago. Those things are behind us. Tell me what’s happening now. What’s going to happen next? Tell me my future, if you can. Now that’s interesting.

Of course it is. The unknown fascinates us while the seemingly banal, ever present reality we face every day loses its luster so quickly we resort to virtual reality to entertain ourselves. It’s a very sad way to live. Yet it generates billions of dollars for those who know how to exploit it. Our shallow desires for stimulation and fulfillment.

Even business seems to have a problem with the past. Specifically, business does not seem to like the fact that some people have a past at all. Job candidates are warned to show no more than 10-15 years of job experience. The rest is just baggage. The experience you’ve worked so hard to earn is recycled into dust.

Besides, what value could anything that happened 25 years ago have to do with today? 

Strange that conservatives claim to love business so much when business seems to hate personal tradition and experience while venerating sometimes naive enthusiasm over experience. They would rather pay less for that and show a short term profit than compensate for better thinking.

Yet the other end of the spectrum is true too. Kids coming out of college are told they need 2-5 years of experience to start a job, yet no one will credit them their studies and internships and sacrifices as “experience” worthy of consideration for a position. It’s a Catch-22 and a tarsnake of ugly proportions. Enough to make you think that business itself has some sort of mental flaw that makes it impossible to think clearly about time, tradition and potential.

Ageism at all ends of the spectrum is now a cultural norm in business. It is considered a job-seeker’s sin to list your age if you are over 40 years old. Yet the kids are getting beaten up too. What’s the point here?

It’s called laziness, actually. Sure, the euphemism is that the job picture is now ruled by a “buyer’s market.” But really it comes down to respect for time and past of a person asking for gainful employment. There’s simply not time to think about all that, so it’s easier to dispense with experience and hire based on a bunch of search terms and a perhaps  dehumanizing interview process. It’s a system with as many flaws and broken parts as the health care system, yet no one seems to be talking about it. Hiring is the province of a million businesses large and small. There are literally no standards of operation except those strange perceptions that float around in the news whenever job numbers are reported.

Steve Jobs of Apple was 56 when he died of pancreatic cancer

Supposedly it is about relevant experience. Yet you cannot be President of the United States until you are past the age of 35. More commonly our Presidents get elected in their 50s or 60s, even serving into their 70s, as Ronald Reagan once did. Many people consider Reagan the most beloved President in the last 50 years, yet his model of seemingly youthful exuberance is apparently lost on the business types who revere is economic policies yet ignore his example of working during his senior years.

In fact it is President’s Day here in America. Men like Abraham Lincoln, George Washington, Theodore Roosevelt and Franklin D. Roosevelt are celebrated in our nation’s history. But not because they were necessarily more vital in their constitution (or Constitution, as it were) than the average human being. It was their ability to overcome their collective flaws that made them great. FDR led America through the most massive war in history while sitting in a wheelchair. Abraham Lincoln fought the mental illness we call depression. One could argue that their flaws and yes, their age were immense benefits in making them the leaders we needed at the time.

Should we not be asking the important question here? If Ronald Reagan and other presidents had something to offer society, should we be dispensing with millions of experienced people simply because they turned 50 or 60 years old? Was Steve Jobs all “used up” at age 56 when he died of pancreatic cancer? Hardly. There were those on Wall Street who thought Apple would collapse without his genius. They are the stupid sharks of short term profits. The vision of the man is what counts long term. He inspired others to think and believe as well. At times like these we should tell Wall Street to shove it.

Dealing with time

Time is both relative and omniscient, if you know how to live right. The experiences each of us has in our youth can contribute in great ways to understanding and even predicting the future for each one of us. And as a society, our collective memories are necessary to recognize the flaws in short-term thinking that so often fall powerful enterprises that are so often focused on short-success. The next quarterly profit report.

If we constantly find ourselves defending the past and the value of our experience, how can we account for the brilliance of great literary talents who draw on the past or even set their works in a time period in order to frame it in a relevant context.

There are cultures in the world who do not view time as we do in Western Culture. They see it either as a continuum or a circle upon which we are all moving. There seems to be a sense in that. We all know that those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it. So if some of us take pride in recalling our exploits, both successes and failures, we should not only be forgiven the habit, but given an ear.

Speedy lessons about time and age

A man who runs a 4:00 mile 50 years ago still has plenty to teach about going faster than any human being ever went before. But some people seem slow to pick up on that fact. And that’s where we seem to be today.

It is fascinating, having invested considerable effort in one phase of life to become the best possible runner I could be, to look at the efforts of those now trying to do the same, and at any age. I believe there is plenty to offer those people. How to avoid injury. How to keep from getting sick. What workouts sharpen fitness or build endurance?

Much of that basic stuff will never change. So what if it was done 30 years ago? If the times one ran 30 years ago are still faster than 99% of the people who run today––the empiric results of time and distance prove that––then the experience of one person is still relevant to almost every situation.

I know several people who worry that their relevance has diminished. Their careers seem to be swimming sideways as a result. But I seek to tell them they have much to offer the world. Our presidents prove that time and again. So do people who reinvent themselves, and who take up a sport like swimming, riding or running (or all three) to prove to themselves they are not all used up.

None of us are. Don’t listen to the world, because the world and business and even religion often don’t know what the hell they are talking about. Every time you put one foot in front of the other, you prove them wrong. Now go out and do it. We Run and Ride for all the right reasons.