Is the world we knew going, going…gone?

Talk about games and time to play or time to pray, and you’ll find many people over-extended one way or another, right now as I am writing this. It will be a very different story when this column appears. By that time the football will already be becoming a memory, the children will be back at school, and the normal round of work-related activities will be facing us again.

Will there be strikes, work stoppages, extra-time put in to catch up for time lost? Will the memories of this once-in-a-lifetime event be good ones; to dine out on or drown out? Probably some will and others won’t, but they are memories and as such are important to us in our continued learning in the game of life.

Glorious victories make players into heroes. Defeated teams will not have been welcomed home with great joy and some even with national and public criticism. Is the game no more than a game, as it should be? What lessons have we learned about the game of life?

July’s family theme of The Veterans’ Cup, with a particular focus on grandparents, does relate in a way to a more mature approach to sport, and possibly to life and the lessons learned, but there would still be a degree of competitiveness involved. Competing against other older people, who have learned the same lessons but have slowed down their pace of living, is still a match. Roger Federer, hero of many tennis fans, has also been overtaken by the inexorable passage of time and lost his Wimbledon crown.

Not every game is a competition. Games are also played for the enjoyment of play, the good feeling one gets after an exhilarating walk or bout of exercise. The gees of play, the energy exerted, the sharpness of mind required, the clever application where brain matters more than brawn – these are also what makes a game worthwhile.

But then a time comes when only the gees remains and even that becomes a challenge. Ask any grandparent how much they enjoy life now compared to yesteryear. We grandparents like to be asked. We can share memories of games played in the past, games watched, even games imagined, because memory does have some tricky dishonest ways about it. But it is important, valuable and even necessary for grandparents to share their life experiences.

In our days we used to write personal letters, maybe make phone calls, but had no brief or generic e-mails or chainletters or even briefer SMS messages to share our lives with each other. The power and beauty of words might disappear in cellphone txt spk, but the thoughts and memories need to be expressed, they are part of our human heritage.

Although bookstores still make a living, there is a definite decline in reading, mostly among young people, but older people too are more into visual stimulation.

At the same time people certainly aren’t talking less – but what are we talking about? Talk radio is a popular modern medium where people are able to express their views freely, whatever they are. Social networking sites such as Facebook or Twitter are mediums that intimidate many older people. Although they do have great potential, there is also so much trash tweeted.

So grandparents try to keep up with the times and adapt as best we can. We can and do talk about things like football and tennis because these are games that still belong in our world (or so we think). But we also question whether they are really about sport or about money, prestige and power. Is the world as we knew it going, going – and when will it be gone? And to whom does it matter?

I am promoting a very informal “Movement of Prayer of Grandparents” for grandchildren, partly because we are deeply concerned about them and fear for them in this modern world, but also in reflecting and praying we can come to a deeper understanding and acceptance of them in their world where in fact they belong and lastly because praying instead of playing is also often all that grandparents are able to bring to the game. (For more on this see www.marfam.org.za/blog)