Outside In

Ted Reads Outside In

10:15

Imagine stepping out of your Manhattan hotel. Expecting motion.

Expecting the noise of tires swishing as cars pass by. Horns blaring, sirens in the distance. Chatter of pedestrians. A rush of humanity brushing past you in both directions.

Instead, you experience nothing.

A six-lane street stretches out before you, empty. No pedestrians. No rush. A single car glides by every 45 seconds or so, as if on assignment. Parking lots built for hundreds hold three lonely vehicles. Not a soul in sight.

That was my experience a few weeks ago.

Not Manhattan. A Southern city.

It took me back to those early COVID days, when the world felt like a movie stopped in the middle of a reel. Like someone had lifted the needle off the record mid-song.

I walked several downtown blocks. Beautiful blocks. Stunning architecture. Wide streets. Massive, covered structures that looked like they were built for bustling farmers markets. Places meant for gathering.

But nothing was gathering.

No cars. No trucks. No people.

Just empty space…waiting.

It’s a recognizable city. One most Americans have heard of, even if they couldn’t quite place it on a map. Population: 200,000.

It wasn’t a holiday. It was lunchtime on Wednesday

I walked toward a café.

And here’s the odd part, I stopped at every crosswalk. Waited every light. Obediently. Dutifully. No cars coming. No people anywhere. Still, I honored the rules.

I found myself wondering what was stranger, the empty city, or me standing there, waiting for permission from an inanimate device to cross streets that clearly didn’t care.

There’s a part of me that didn’t want to end up in a Southern jail. I’ve seen one too many TV shows about Angola. I remembered scenes from the movie “Brother Where Art Thou.” Cameras everywhere, right? Someone watching a monitor, just waiting for me to break the law.

The brochures say Elvis Presley played the municipal auditorium often.

That was where I was headed later that day to attend a concert of a friend.

The buildings were stunning and well-kept. Loved even.

Generous parking lots. Clean sidewalks.

It felt like the city had been alive yesterday.

And today everyone stayed home.

Historical plaques lined the streets. I stopped and read them all. Rich stories. Deep roots. A beautiful past.

And yet, walking there felt less like being in a city… and more like wandering through a well-maintained cemetery.

I was heading to lunch. A small diner.

According to my map, I had arrived—but there was no sign. Just a piece of paper taped to the window that read “Open.”

Could’ve been a diner. Could’ve been a pawn shop.

I went in anyway.

Glanced down, and there it was. The name of the restaurant set into the tile floor.

Relief.

There was seating for fifty. Seven people were scattered across the room like punctuation marks.

I ordered the meatloaf special.

Good call.

Southerners know what they’re doing with meatloaf, mashed potatoes, snap beans, baked yams, and red sauce.

I asked the waitress where everyone was.

“Across the river,” she said.

Over the past decade, a massive casino complex had been built.

A magnet. Pulling, sucking the people, energy, commerce, all of it, from here…to there.

She told me her story. How it happened.

How this little diner was the only place still open for blocks in any direction. How she wasn’t sure how much longer she could hold on.

She was kind. Tired. Carrying something quiet and heavy I could only imagine.

I left a generous tip.

It felt like the least I could do.

The city center was still there.

Clean. Maintained. Intact.

But the life had been drawn out of it.

Like a dead June bug’s shell, perfectly formed, but hollow.

Emptied from the outside in, dying not from the inside out as one would expect.

And I realized… that metaphor isn’t just about cities.

In our culture, there aren’t many places where elders are seen as having something essential left to give. Too often, they’re treated like those empty shells, still here, but no longer considered necessary. Warehoused. Sometimes even a burden. Secret wishes by the younger generations for them to “move on.”  Hollowed out, from the outside in.

Unless…

We find ourselves in a family like the one I sat with the very next day.

Twelve hours with them on the land their ancestors homesteaded in 1830.

Members of different families all sharing the same land.  Stories. Laughter. Endless unbelievably luscious Southern cooking.

As they talked, they spoke often of the elders, past and present. Not with a sense of being tolerated, but treasured. Remembered. Quoted. Honored.

Some alive in story, even when gone in body.

Unless…

We belong to a community that knows better.

Twelve-step communities are one place. Elders, old-timers play important, essential irreplaceable roles. Wisdom carriers, truth tellers, witnesses to the long arc of a life. The  younger generations’ grateful receivers. The older, the more venerated and honored.

Unless…..

We are blessed to be with a special group of unrelated people who serve as a family of choice, that typically “works” better than our family of origin ever did.  Loving, honoring, supporting (in person sometimes) often visiting once or twice a year, and most often every month as a family reunion of type.  I am fortunate to be in a number of them.

Some other possibilities are a few faith traditions that sincerely offer that kind of honoring (I imagine, though I have never actually witnessed it though part of one for 20 years). At least I hope so.

I know in the Lakota culture, the older are more honored. Some folks pretend to be older, to start receiving that reward a little sooner.

Because without that…

We old coots risk becoming like that city.

Still standing. Still structured.

But emptied.

Sucked dry from the outside in.

And maybe the real tragedy isn’t aging.

Maybe it’s being seen as having nothing left to offer in a world that no longer knows what it doesn’t know. Doesn’t know how to receive the treasures laying right before them.