Can You Change Your Mind at Age 80?

Our country is currently hyper-politicized and polarized around a growing number of topics. And we seem to be growing more and more rigid by the day.

The question I ask is this: Is the direction of human change always necessarily toward greater rigidity?

Or are there circumstances that allow us to move away from rigidity and become more flexible?

To help explore this question, let me offer a true story:

Around 30 years ago, I was living in Los Angeles, and my father was living in a retirement community 30 miles to the East.

I was close enough that I could pop in and visit with my dad once a week or so. I have a younger brother and sister, but they were living too far from Dad to see him on a regular basis.

My sister lived near Denver, and my brother lived over a hundred miles to the East of my dad. So regular visits to see Dad were difficult for them. And my dad was nearly blind at that point, and his hearing was very bad, so he wasn’t able to drive.

One week Dad and I decided we would take a couple of days and I would drive us out to visit my brother Jim. We were both excited and looked at the trip as a big adventure.

Long family car trips were one of the great pleasures during my years of growing up. As a Presbyterian minister, Dad was in a very stressful profession, and long road trips were a great way for him to unwind.

But there was another side to our family life that wasn’t so pleasant.

My dad was always extremely critical of my brother and sister and me. Nothing we could do ever measured up to his exacting standards. The criticism was constant. If we did things his way, we were fine. But when we didn’t do things his way, well, we were just wrong! That was really all there was to it.

Which is not to say that he had a sour disposition.

In spite of his relentless criticism, Dad had one of the best senses of humor I’ve ever seen. He was always telling jokes. In fact, humor was such a dominant part of his personality, that when I spoke at his memorial service, I told two jokes he had told me shortly before he died.

One involved Noah’s Ark. After the ark finally landed on dry land, Noah opened the doors and told all the animals to go forth and multiply. They all joyfully bounded out and disappeared. But when Noah made a final inspection tour of the ark, he saw that a snake was still there. “I thought I told you to go forth and multiply!” Noah exclaimed.

“I can’t,” replied the snake. “I’m an adder.”

So we had lots of jokes and a multitude of puns, but they occurred amid a constant barrage of criticism.

On the day I picked up my dad to drive out to see my brother Jim, we were embarking on yet another family road trip.

We were having a very mellow conversation as I drove along, and then Dad said something that completely astounded me:

He said, “Jim is not living the life I would choose for him, but it’s his life, and he’s entitled to live it however he chooses.”

I was so stunned by Dad’s comment that I almost drove off the freeway. “It’s Jim’s life and he gets to live it however he chooses!” I couldn’t believe Dad had said that. There was no criticism! It seemed astonishing.

When I finally pulled into Jim’s driveway, he hurried out to greet us. I jumped out of the car, pulled Jim aside, and shared what Dad had said. “Dad said WHAT?!!” he exclaimed. He was as amazed as I was.

And we continue to be amazed.

Because Dad’s comment about my brother was not a one-time occurrence. It was the announcement of a radically new way my father had decided to live his life. And it wasn’t just a new attitude Dad had toward my brother.

He acted in an accepting, non-judgmental way toward my sister and me from then on also. It was a radical, fundamental change in my father’s personality.

Why?

We never really knew. Dad was 83 when it happened, and he was definitely aging, with noticeable hearing and vision problems. But there were no indications of dementia. In fact, Dad’s mind was extremely acute until the day he died four years later.

Any time I got together with my brother or sister after that, one of us would inevitably mention Dad and his amazing change. We always referred to it as “Dad’s change,” and marveled and puzzled over it.

And there are other such stories.

I have worked as a professional mediator for the last 20 years. In that role I have seen other breakthroughs like my father’s, often involving reconciliation and forgiveness.

They are rare and impossible to predict. But, like the black swan posited by Nassim Taleb, in his book The Black Swan, they exist. They are wonderful to witness. I think of them as Holy Breakthroughs.

The question is: What can we do to ensure that more Holy Breakthroughs exist in more places for more people?