Sabiduría Talks was partly inspired by a town where I lived in 2018: Ourense, Spain. With the oldest population in the country, I spent every day walking past men in gorgeous leather coats and fedoras, accessorized with antique walking canes and the occasional cigar. They were the epitome of style; they felt boundless.
Roaming the city, they filled every park bench, street corner, and café, a coffee in one hand and the morning paper in the other. I was dying to know their story. Who had they loved? Had they lived here forever? What did they still have left to do?
I realized that our conversations with our elders— parents, grandparents, neighbors, friends— has grown few and far between. Talks with our grandmothers don’t go much deeper than her recipes, though she’s told you how she robbed a bank miraculously at 18.
I created a list of questions that I hope helps spark more in-depth and beautiful conversations between us and the aging, to keep us both from loneliness and the intolerable sensation of feeling overlooked.
For more information on Sabiduría, including the list of questions, visit Sabiduría Talks.
“I would tell my younger self: ‘Pat, you need to go and see the world. Travel and do everything you want to do. And somehow, there will be a way to make it happen.’ Because that’s really what I wanted to do. I just didn’t have any money.”
“I’ve learned that it’s not a bowl of cherries. Life is not easy. Life can be wonderful, if you want to make it wonderful. If you want to mope around and do nothing, then your life— there’s not much to it.”
