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We often hear the saying, “you can’t teach an old dog new tricks” in relation to people.  It means that once people have spent a portion of their lives thinking, believing and behaving a certain way, you’re not going to be able to convince them to think, believe or behave any differently.  What it essentially means is, “people can’t change.”

Well here are my thoughts on it:  I… call… bullshit.

In fact, I’m willing to bet money that the person who came up with the saying, “you can’t teach an old dog new tricks,” was probably the perfect example of an old dog, someone stubborn, set in their ways, and possessing no desire to change their way of thinking.  These people certainly exist.  However, it’s not that they can’t change their ways of thinking, it’s that they won’t. 

Some people are simply unwilling to open their minds to new ideas and possibilities.  They’ve determined that they believe things to be true, and there is just no point in trying to convince them otherwise.  These people can be difficult in relationships with other people, especially those who are more open-minded. 

No one met the personification of an “old dog” better than my grandfather.

My grandfather was born in the 1920’s and grew up in a large family living in a basement apartment in New York City.  In the midst of the Great Depression, he was the oldest of 8 children, and was forced to drop out of school in the ninth grade in order to help make money to feed the family.  He shined the shoes of wealthy businessmen for a nickel a piece and had to use the money he earned to buy food for his brothers and sisters and to buy more shoe polish when he’d run out.  It was engrained in his mind from as far back as he could remember that having money meant surviving.  Money became the most important thing in his life, because it literally meant the difference between life and death.

My grandfather worked hard and eventually went on to open his own business.  His business was successful enough that when he was in his late 50’s he was able to sell the business and retire.  To him, this was the true American Dream story, and he would never forget where he came from, his humble beginnings, and how he was able to work hard and build his life so that he and my grandmother could travel and see the world in their golden years, while still young enough to enjoy them.

But the damage that some of these experiences did to his psyche was not often understood.  My grandfather was obsessed with money.  It became his only concern.  It was how he used to judge other people.  If he met someone new, his first question was “what does he do?” in the hopes of knowing, “how much does he make?”.  When someone would turn up in a new car, he would ask, “how much did you pay for it?”.  If a friend invited them over to see their new house, he would ask, out loud, “How much did this cost you?”  It was always so embarrassing to me.  But he didn’t think anything of it. There was nothing about his upbringing that had ever taught him that it was considered rude, judgmental or tacky to ask such questions.

I remember when I tried to introduce him to my first serious boyfriend as an adult.  It wasn’t like I was asking him to welcome him into the family just yet, but only wanting them to meet, or perhaps include him in a dinner out with the family.  My grandfather asked me, “what does he do?”  When I gave him the answer, it was clear that he was immediately displeased with the idea of meeting him, and without having any other knowledge about this person other than his profession, he followed it up with a rude and stern warning to “stop wasting my time with people that were never going to amount to anything in life.”

I didn’t speak to my grandfather for over a year and a half after that conversation.  I was so angry at him.  I wasn’t brought up to judge people by what they had or didn’t have.  I was upset that he never once asked me the questions about my boyfriend that I thought were the most important.  “Does he treat you the way you deserve to be treated?” “Does he love you?” “Does he make you happy?”  He made a generalization about a man I loved and cared about because he didn’t have a lot of money.  He treated another human being like the trash that would have once classified his own family growing up according to his own standards.

When my grandfather was angry at me (or my mother or aunt), he would threaten to “cut us out of the will.”  That was his threat.  His punishment to withhold love from us was to not leave us money when he died.  I understand now that this was the only way he knew how to show love or disappointment.  He hadn’t received the nurturing from his own family that a young person desperately needed, and he only had one love language that he could use to show how he felt about someone… money.  It never worked with me, though.  I’d tell him to go ahead and cut me out of the will.  I’d tell him I didn’t want his money, especially if it meant he could hurt me and upset me by not caring about what’s important to me.  He didn’t get it.  He just wasn’t wired that way.

During this time that we weren’t speaking, my grandmother, who I was very close to, would constantly beg me to “make up with my grandfather.”  Her suggestion was always that I should apologize to him.  What did I have to apologize for?  He hurt MY feelings!  My grandmother would say, “Laurie, please do it for me.  That’s just the way he is.  He can’t help it.”  When I’d ask why she isn’t begging him to apologize to me, her answer was, “He won’t apologize. He is stubborn.  You can’t teach an old dog new tricks.”

I eventually made up with my grandfather, but that was hardly the last disagreement we would have, nor was it the last time I was threatened with being cut out of the will.  If he really called his attorney all the times he’d threatened us that he was, that attorney probably made half of our inheritance in billable fees.  I learned to just accept that this is the way he is for reasons I was fortunate enough to never understand, and I resolved myself to the idea that you can’t teach an old dog new tricks.

My grandfather’s health took a turn for the worse in 2002, and he began the very long road of living on dialysis for the next ten years.  The toll it took on his body was grueling and the days of their annual summer trips to the mountains were no longer possible.  The traveling overseas, the country club where they were members, the dining out and even the visiting Orlando every few months to see me, my mother and their great-grandchildren were now a thing of the past.  Where he once had the money and freedom to see the world and spend times with loved ones, he now had confinement and loneliness, especially when our work and school schedules made it difficult for us to visit as often as we’d have liked.

It only became worse when my grandmother became ill with cancer in 2008 and passed away in 2009.  He was essentially alone, and while he had his daughters and a live-in nurse to help him, he was basically existing just to make it to the next dialysis appointment, which consisted of a day of traveling by private ambulance as he was now unable to walk.  The last time I went to visit him with my children, he asked me to sit down and talk to him alone.  I pulled up a chair next to his hospital bed that he had in his bedroom.  He said the most unbelievable things to me that day.

He told me that he loved me.  He always loved me and my mother and my aunt and my grandmother.  He told me that he knew that he was a difficult man.  He told me he wished he had been taught another way to show it.  He told me that everything he always did in life was in hopes of providing the best life for all of us.  He only cared about his family.  And the only way he knew how to show it was to make money and support us all.  He told me that he now knew the things he didn’t see before about what is most important in this life.  He knew it was love and family, and not money, that is the most important thing.  He said all the money in the world is useless to him in a hospital bed without his family by his side.  All the money in the world could not have prevented him from getting sick, from changing his quality of life, and from losing his wife, who was his high school sweetheart and the all-time love of his life. 

He basically apologized to me that day, without actually saying the words, “I’m sorry.”  But for a man like him to admit that he had essentially been wrong to focus on the things he thought could bring happiness, but in the end were nothing more than basic survival, was the most unexpected moment I would ever share with my grandfather.

It was right then and there that I knew it wasn’t true.  Old dogs CAN learn new tricks.  They just have to want to. 

When stubborn people are so set in their ways, many times it’s based out of fear.  Fear of being wrong, fear of looking weak, fear of the unknown, fear of judgement.  My grandfather was in a place in his life where the fear of dying alone could overpower any fear of bruising his ego.  He wanted me to know that he had found the real meaning of life. 

When you’re dealing with someone difficult in your life, and you think they will never change, the truth is you may be right.  They may never change.  But they can… if they really want to. The lesson here is not to count them out as hopeless.  Don’t say they “can’t” learn new tricks because they can.  Even they may not believe they’re capable of it.  But when the situation arises that they realize their inherent need to be loved is on the line, they can change.  I hope for their sake, and for yours, that they do while there is time.

xoxo