“You Know What I Have Learned?”

      As I climbed up the ladder, one day toward the end of summer, after a swim in a lake, I saw a man I respect swimming around near the dock.

      Having read or skimmed the same books and listened to the same music, we have good, easy conversations—my kind of conversations: making connections; not dwelling on any particular topic too long; maybe veering, upon occasion, a little too close to the pretentious.

     I suspect you fall into such fluid and far-reaching conversations, upon occasion, too.

     I had driven this guy somewhere on a recent evening. So the talk turned to driving and then to long road trips we had each once-upon-a-time undertaken. And, as sometimes happens, there were allusions, on my part at least, to other kinds of when-we-were-young trips.

      We were sharing, in other words, our generation’s version of war stories. That doesn’t embarrass me. I have been fortunate enough to have avoided fighting in any wars. But I have done some stuff. Adventurous stuff done is interesting to recall. Tales are fun to tell.

      Then my acquaintance told of having engaged in such a conversation with a fellow older than either of us.

      This was, he explained, a man—something of a philosopher—who had, in his long life, experienced a lot, seen a lot, had a lot of tales to tell.

      “And you know what I have learned?” my acquaintance recalled this older man asking one day.

      I waited, as he had waited, for the answer.

      This was it: “Not a whole hell of a lot.”