Nine adult students at the University of Massachusetts in Boston, nearing the end of a course on human development, had arrived at the section on old age. To treat the subject, the professor, who is my friend and neighbor, had invited me to teach the class and share with the students my experience of later life. This I did while also learning from them something of their deepest personal concerns.

These men and women, though few in number, represented a surprisingly wide range of identity and experience. Black, brown and white; foreign and native born; young adult and middle-aged –  – these students are typical of many now found in large public urban universities and community colleges. By reason of having been heavily engaged in the serious issues of life, they have all brought much value to the learning experience, as I was soon to discover.

When invited to introduce themselves and speak briefly about their lives, almost all spoke of mistakes they had made when younger. The prominence of this theme in their life stories –  –  and the students’ willingness to acknowledge it to others –  –  surprised and impressed me. Clearly, these mistakes had played a large part in shaping their lives up to now.

In response, I acknowledged to them my own record of serious errors of judgment, decisions, and behavior. Often, as I look back over the decades of my life, I blush to see how I many times I have acted stupidly or at least unwisely. Fortunately, no one of these bad moves was enough to damage seriously my own life prospects or appears to have hurt other people badly.

Some of the students did not specify their mistakes. However, others  mentioned unwanted pregnancies, ill-advised marriages, macho behavior, and serious drinking addictions. Other behavioral problems, even more difficult to talk about, seemed to lurk in the background.

I suggested to these learners that the most appropriate response to these mistakes is compassion.  Acknowledging that it is often harder to be compassionate toward oneself than toward others, I encouraged them to take as model the way they would feel about a dear friend who had done something wrong or mistaken.

Just as they would accept friends for their inner worth and perhaps find excusing reasons why those friends had behaved badly, so they might reasonably direct these feelings toward themselves. Everyone in the classroom seemed to agree about the reasonableness of this approach, while acknowledging its difficulty in practice.

In general, we Americans today can expect to live into our seventies or eighties. Barring fatal disease, accidents, or violence, most of us will have a long range of years from which to look back on our lives. That perspective makes it possible for us to grow in knowledge of ourselves and to learn how to accept ourselves better, warts and all.

One of the many advantages of living long is the increasing ability to see misdeeds of the past in a new light. As I look back, these errors look more human than they once did. They still dismay me but I take them now as part of being only sometimes a rational animal. I may feel called to higher ideals but I have frequently lapsed to levels beneath my basic dignity.

The adults sitting before me seemed already to have developed a greater wisdom about their lives. At least they looked encouraged as they heard me lay it out before them. Already they had grown enough in wisdom to recognize how going back to school could help them.  Even in the midst of serious obstacles, they had leaped over these hurdles and determined to get college degrees for themselves.

The beauty of this decision is not only that it allows them to gain credentials for improving themselves in the world of work. It also enables them to learn more about themselves and their inner world, a knowledge far more precious in the long run.

Asked about his take on the students’ revealing of mistakes, their professor says he was not expecting such a strong theme of regret about the past. He sees the good that has emerged from the experience, imagining it as “new growth coming from a felled tree.”

Richard Griffin