Eighteen to Eighty-Four: What Intergenerational Circles Teach Us

Picture a circle of people gathered together. As they gaze at one another for the first time, some eyes are eighteen and actively finding their identity in the world, and others range from their early thirties to eighty-four, carrying a lifetime worth sharing. They sit together on the land at Emberlight, grounding in a guided meditation, settling into silence, talking about death. They practice deep listening. They sing.  They bear witness to grief and gratitude, intertwined.

Last year, Warren Wilson offered a First Year Seminar course called Memento Mori, Latin for "remember you must die." Lindsey Kass-Green wasn't sure the course would appeal to students. It became the most requested seminar of the year, and the college is offering it again this year.

Emberlight staff member Jenna Lindbo, partnered with Lindsay’s class as Warren Wilson's community partner, building an intergenerational circle that brought students and Emberlight volunteers together to explore what it means to live a life holding death close. Everyone in that circle experienced something hard to name and impossible to forget.

For the students who joined the circle, still early in their own lives, the encounter was disorienting in the best kind of way. "It was incredible, as someone who is queer and gender-fluid, seeing queer elders who are flourishing into their eighties, is a powerful reminder that I too could have a long and meaningful life" one student shared. An elder offered the same wonder from the other direction.

"I would die to have been able to take a course like this when I was in college," one volunteer reflected, imagining what it would have meant to sit with mortality this early in life.

What emerges when a circle spans sixty-six years is not instruction flowing in one direction. It is something closer to remembering together what it means to be fully alive at every age. The gift moves both ways. Carla Riffel, who has been a member of Emberlight's Wisdom Circle exploring what it means to age consciously, remembers feeling excited about the opportunity to hear the students' perspectives and share her own experience.

The students explored Emberlight’s values through a craft project and elders shared how using values as a guidepost for conscious living can be a touchstone for remembering again and again what it is to become the best of humanity. Their value flags now hang in every building on our campus.

One student reflected that their elder partner was "so funny and strong and wise and grounded in a way that I'm not grounded yet. It shows you how much life you have to look forward to, and all the potential that could still be in your life." Another found delight in "the different types of

people you could call friends or mentors. It doesn't have to stop when you're thirty or forty or fifty or sixty or seventy or eighty." One volunteer in her eighties put it simply: "I really love being in my eighties. There's a lot of good stuff about getting older.” She told the students she was with, "you just gotta wait and see!"

These conversations didn't ask participants to resolve what death means, or to arrive at certainty about what waits on the other side of it. What the circle offered, to young and old alike, was a willingness to sit in the question together and notice what becomes possible when we do.

"Hearing the reflections, wisdom, and vulnerability from students and volunteers alike was profound," Jenna commented. "It's remarkable what becomes possible when we slow down to truly see one another, when we say yes to a stranger, walk closely with death, and awaken to the power of love and service."

That is the whole of it. Eighteen and eighty-four, sitting in the same circle, tending the same fire, discovering that the distance between those two numbers is smaller than either generation expected.