8 lessons for living a full life

We have much to learn, says Karl Pillemer, from people who have led long, happy lives

WE ARE ON the verge of losing an irreplaceable natural resource. The inexorable process of human aging is depriving us of one of the most extraordinary groups of human beings that has ever lived: America's older generation. The last veteran of World War I has died; those of World War II are now in their 80s. The youngest children of the Great Depression have reached their late 70s. When this generation has passed, where will we go to recover the lessons they learned about life? For five years, I have collected the advice and wisdom of over a thousand of our elders — "experts," as I call them — about surviving and thriving in a difficult world. Here is what eight of them had to say.

Marry someone like you
APRIL STERN *, 71, and her husband, Steve, were married for 47 years, until Steve's death. April is a highly respected community leader who directed several local organizations, and Steve was a well-known local psychotherapist. They were deeply in love throughout their long relationship. "I think we modeled a good marriage, our children even talked about that as being important to them," says April.

"It sounds simple, but you have to like each other. Be friends, try to get past the initial heaving and panting, and make sure there's a real friendship underneath that. I don't think you have to have identical interests, but you've got to have shared values. That is quite important. That was critical. Yeah, I think values are probably the most important thing.

"And we both loved certain kinds of things. We both loved movies, good movies, and part of our courtship involved staying up all night and figuring out what an Ingmar Bergman film really meant. We both loved to read, and we loved to talk about what we'd read.

"A similar sense of humor — that was a very important part of our life together. In fact, just two weeks before he died, we were talking one night, and he said something and I just dissolved in laughter, and he looked at me so self-satisfied and said, 'I can still make you laugh after all these years!' And he could."

Honor your vows
EUGENE EARNHART, 80, is a trim, handsome man with close-cropped gray hair. Eugene's speech is halting, due to the effects of a stroke, and it took him a while to tell me his most important life lesson. He did so with such emotion that he was forced to stop at times to collect himself. But in the end, he was relieved at the knowledge that others might profit from his experience. Eugene's career involved frequent relocation and extensive business travel, which was bound up with a life regret he cannot get over. He told me:

"Listen, this is very important and it's…it's that people should respect fidelity. I'm the worst one in the world to appreciate that because I was not a faithful husband, and I regret it. I think it was the fact that I roamed around the country in my work. And I really want to make this point about how fidelity is important to marriage. That's what I'd do over if you could. Oh, definitely! I was an idiot.

"And she was a wonderful wife. I could never make it up to her. Even to the end, I was unfaithful. Fidelity wasn't there. It's hard for me to say this, and sometimes I get really depressed about it. But I tell people, 'Don't ramble around the country, doing what I did.' Faithfulness is one of the most important things that people should cling to."

Share your kids' lives
CLAYTON GREENOUGH, 79, has very close relationships with his son and daughter, both of whom settled near him as adults. When asked for his lessons about child rearing, he reflected on the importance of going along with children's interests and making them shared activities.

"Maybe it's an old-fashioned way of speaking, but I feel that it's pretty important to stick with them. When my son was a sophomore in high school, I started putting up a shed in our backyard. And he was taking a shop class in high school at the time. I had him help me there, and before I knew it I'd come home from work and he'd be sitting with a toolbox, waiting to go ahead with some work. And this led him down a road where he actually saw the need for measuring and things like that and started to recognize that there is some value to arithmetic and mathematics. He eventually wound up being a mechanical designer. Now, if I hadn't been available to him at that time, I'm not sure what course he might have taken. So many of the things that he's doing now were initiated because we spent time together — the fact that there was somebody who was there and interested in what he was interested in."

Learn from bad experiences
SAM WINSTON, 81, trained as an engineer but also worked in marketing and as a general manager. He attributes his considerable career success specifically to his ability to learn from jobs he didn't like. The key, he says, is to see them as learning experiences and to take advantage of any opportunity to gather knowledge about an industry or occupation.

"One important thing for young people is to be observant. No matter what the task is, whether you like it or not, it's very important to learn everything you can about what's happening around you. You never know when that may be of great value later. I've had many different experiences throughout my life where I really didn't like what I had to do and I would feel what I was doing was inconsequential. But the lessons I learned doing those things played an important part in my life. For example, I had to work my way through college, in many jobs you may consider meaningless. Later on they were very valuable for me as an employer, to help me understand my people. I would tell younger people that no matter what the experience is — learn. See what's happening."