The New Elders

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There are a lot of mentors who've had experiences and they can show you kind of where the stumps are in the water, but they're not necessarily wise. The wise can see lots of different truths, not just theirs or yours, across a larger spectrum.

EU: There's a guy in Minneapolis named David Lebedoff who wrote an article for Esquire some years back. It's my favorite article of all time. He observed that from grade school on, people are divided by their test-taking abilities. Those who test best are moved on to advanced-placement classes, and then they get into certain colleges, and we end up living with, working with, and hanging out with people who have similar test-taking abilities.

He said the danger is that people start thinking that their test-taking ability, their so-called 'measurable intelligence,' makes them more fit to make decisions for the rest of us, somehow makes them wiser. He says that's anti-democratic. The best decisions -- and our founding fathers recognized this -- come from the majority, and what the majority has in common is not test-taking ability or knowledge but life experience. That's where wisdom comes from. A farmer who never goes 50 miles from his farm in North Dakota has a different kind of life experience than someone who's traveled the world, but he may be just as wise, or even wiser, than that globetrotter.

Is wisdom a prerequisite for mentoring?

RL: No, but I do think we all need to ask the larger questions. You don't have to have the answers, that wisdom, on tap, but the questions need to speak to a greater purpose.

EU: I heard [the Dalai Lama] speak once, and the first thing he said was, 'I am just a simple monk.' That recognition of our common humanity is what still sticks with me.

RL: And he's got a robust sense of humor. I think part of wisdom is the humor to be able to see what you don't know and don't understand.

What role does spirituality play? Is it necessary?

EU: Yes, for any relationship to have depth, I think it is. To me, that doesn't mean a particular belief system. Seeing the essential human being in the other, getting past the differences, is essential. That for me is spiritual.

RL: The wise elder knows that a balanced life is about both saving and savoring the world. She sees the whole, and the whole is not just you and your predicament. Whatever language you want to give to that, whether you call it spiritual or something else, the central idea is to recognize that it's about something much bigger than you are -- you just need to figure out your role.

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