David Romanelli - Life Lessons from the Oldest & Wisest: Inspiration, Wisdom, and Humor for All Generations

Copyright 2018 by David Romanelli

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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is available on file.

Cover design by Rose Leopold

Cover photo by Norberto Rodriguez

Print ISBN: 978-1-5107-3659-7

Ebook ISBN: 978-1-5107-3662-7

Printed in the United States of America

DEDICATION

To my grandparents, Evelyn and Joe, Neda and Bert: every day, I think about when we played catch and went fishing, ate gnocchi for lunch and cremadoro for dessert, and shared long conversations snacking on bagel chips at a Jewish deli. How much I have missed you and how excited I am to see you again.

To my children, Remo and Cooper: cherish your grandparents. Be grateful for their kindness and patience. Eat all the cookies and ice cream they give you at their houses (because chances are you wont get as much at ours), and ask lots of questions. Its a special time in life. Enjoy every minute of it.

To Beverly: you opened the door and lit the way. I am one of thousands who walk this path, because of you.

Ya know that old trees just grow stronger

And old rivers grow wilder every day

Old people just grow lonesome

Waiting for someone to say, Hello in there, hello

John Prine, country-folk singer songwriter

CONTENTS

INTRODUCTION

O n April 28, 2018, at 7:30 a.m., I experienced my greatest fear and my greatest blessing, and it all happened at once.

I went for a morning run with my sixteen-month-old daughter in our rough-and-tumble jogging stroller. We were running down a very quiet street in the Mar Vista neighborhood of Los Angeles. This is a safe and secure neighborhood, with young children playing in their front yards, and parents and grandparents walking with their morning coffee.

It was the perfect Southern California spring morning, with a slight chill in the air, and the warm sun rising. I had just removed my sweatshirt and placed it in the stroller. My daughter snacked on her favorite cereal.

As we were crossing the street on the corner of Navy and Inglewood, a grey car slowed down at the stop sign, but strangely kept rolling toward us. I hollered at the driver to get his attention. I was sure he would hear me and slow down. But the car kept coming, and then seemed to accelerate. I screamed in anger and then shock and then terror as the car slammed into the baby stroller with my daughter inside.

The stroller exploded out of my hands and went flying in the opposite direction.

Imagine my horror as I ran to the stroller which had collapsed on the ground, fifteen feet away from impact. My daughter was strapped into the stroller and crying hysterically. With my shaking hands, I unbuckled her and held her in my arms.

The driver sped away. It was a hit-and-run. It came out of nowhere. The firefighters arrived, then my wife and three-year-old son, then the police.

We took my daughter to the doctor and she was okay. I was okay. We dodged a bullet.

It all happened so fast, but in the moment before impact, I desperately tried to make eye contact with the driver. I could not see his eyes. He was looking down at what must have been his phone. As I write this, it is still an open investigation with the LAPD.

Whether or not they catch the driver, I am just grateful and fortunate to be able to share a happy ending to this story. But it was a warning to me, and to you. All a father wants to do is protect his children, and to think danger came exploding out of the blue on an otherwise tranquil weekend morning.

Now you might be thinking, thats a scary story but what does this have to do with the oldest and wisest?

Einstein said, The distinction between the past, present, and future is only a stubbornly persistent illusion.

All of time is woven together and intricately connected, like one of those lanyards you create in 3rd grade. The past creates the future just as the future informs past. If I think too hard about it, I get confused.

But something happened in the days leading up to the hit-and-run incident with my daughter. I feel that I had been prepared for the meaning of the impact.

A few weeks prior to this hit-and-run incident, I received a rather blunt email from a woman named Tara. The message read, Dave, I received your blog in the past and thought you were taking the branding kool-aid. So I never paid attention. But the work you are doing with elders is refreshing.

This one brief message sums up the arc of my personal journey. In the past, I combined yoga with chocolate and wine. It was all about joie de vivre and living in the moment. It was fun and playful, but it wasnt adding much value to the world.

Then I became a father and wanted to do something more meaningful. How could I, in some way, leave the world a better place than how I found it?

When my last surviving grandparent passed away in 2010, I realized its hard to get old. But in America, we make it even harder. If its not the aches and pains of aging, then its the social isolation. Most elders do not have a prominent voice in our communities. Many are living lonely lives in retirement facilities, disconnected from the younger generations. And yet, these elders have so much history, so much to share.

So I put out a simple request to my community: who is your favorite elder?

Some people shared memories and inspirations from a favorite elder, many of which are included as little quips and quotes between the chapters to come.

Other people started connecting me with their grandmothers and elder mothers, college professors and high school art teachers, neighbors who are Holocaust survivors, nannies who have become mentors. They were all in their 80s, 90s, and 100s, and they all had something they wanted to share.

These elders told me many powerful life lessons that helped me become a more purposeful professional, a more vested parent, a more awakened husband.

Heres the thing. The advice from someone at the very end of their life is much different from someone in the middle of their life. An elders wisdom is often raw, unscripted, unbranded, poignant, and deeply personal. It probably wont come to you in short, polished soundbites that you can cut and paste onto social media.

But I have found that if you ask an elder to share their story, and if you are willing to spend some time and listen to their answer, they will teach you something that you cannot learn from even the most successful self-help gurus or the most high-impact business coaches.