The interviewer heard they’d planned to write ten volumes and laughed at the two old people. He laughed at them, not with them, and looked at them like they were crazy, “How old are you anyway? Don’t you think your too old? Do you really think you can finish this project?”

Those weren’t his exact words but something like them. Both William and Ariel in their nineties looked at him like he was crazy.

There were the three of them. Two staring at one and it was the young interviewer who seemed to carry the weight of decrepitude.

The POINT was to write, to learn, to wake up with a purpose, not be interviewed at the end of a project. What a wonderful life. I saw Ariel and William Durant interviewed because they’d completed another book in their series, ‘Story of Civilization’. They changed me.

In middle school I angrily and resentfully applied myself to projects because they were assigned to me.  But I began to recognized the joy of hard work. I saw that my parents and the Durant’s loved the process and the discipline. I began to recognize the lazy me, the do whatever is easy me, wasn’t alive and was far from satisfied. I set my parents and the Durant’s as my pattern. Perhaps this is the best principle I learned in school and best reason to stay in school.  nancymauerman.com

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