A Lesson from a Subway Ride

It was a cool, crisp autumn day in the Big Apple. Being in the mood for an adventure to somewhere interesting, I took a subway and headed downtown hoping to end up in the West Villiage.

The L train was crowded, no empty seats. I comfortably stood with the rest of the cluster. A teenage boy caught my eye. He was staring right at me as we locked eyes for a second or two. He spoke, “please have my seat.”

As he rose I graciously accepted his offer. Nothing else was said. My visceral thought was ‘wow, this kid has good parents.” There was nothing about my physical presence that would suggest any struggle of standing. Clearly he observed an elder.

Now I hear some commentary that this kind of action is perhaps a form of ageism: because I’m older I was stereotyped. Maybe he had a deficit lens of aging that unarguably plagues this country and that his apparently kind act was a benign expression of subtle prejudice. Additionally there are articles, such as in the Huffington Post(This Is Why You Shouldn’t Offer Your Seat To The Elderly), that say  it’s healthier for them to stand. Perhaps, but isn’t that missing the point? One can easily get too secularized and miss the purpose entirely.

I contemplated that. My initial gut feeling seemed truthful. The boy acted deferential to an elder; a basic tenet in every spiritual tradition . In Leviticus, God instructs Moses to tell the Israelites, among many other things, “you shall rise before the aged and show deference to the old.” This teenager taught me a lesson: some ancient values survive even in this modern world.