Where is the village, the elder and the tree? - Life’s biggest questions
In 1999 Richard Branson (Virgin Empire) and Peter Gabriel (Genesis), were feeling overwhelmed by the issues they saw facing the world at that time and the lack of people who were equipped with the wisdom, moral authority and courage to address them. They took the big question to the one person they knew had these qualities, Nelson Mandela. After deep discussion Mandela’s shared with them that in his experience people would go to the village elder for such wisdom. From that conversation the solution he proposed was the formation of the global Elders, which was officially launched in 2007. That was the same year that my ongoing research for my book on eldering To Plant A Walnut Tree – How to create a fruitful legacy by using your experience, took me into the foothills of the Rwenzori mountains on the Uganda - D R Congo border. During that trip I visited a number of villages, met the local elders and discussed with them the kinds of topics young people came for wisdom about?
Fast forwards to August 2026 and the world seems even more desperately hungry for elders. Where are the wise women and men with moral authority and courage who are essential to helping leaders fulfil their potential[1], and everyone else to find sustainable, wise, courageous and innovative solutions to their life’s challenges?
For all my work in recovering eldering over the past two decades I recently had a flash of the blinding obvious and it was that the four key questions that we need to be asking today had, in fact, been staring me in the face in 1999 and 2007.
These are the four questions that I need to consider today.
Q 1. Where is the village?
I grew up in a tiny village called Tillingham, in the remote east of England; the last village before you got swallowed up by the Dengie marshes and the North Sea. As kids we knew and were known by everyone. Teachers, the doctor, the policeman, the fireman and even old Mr Acaster who mysteriously let his monocle fall from his eye when we blew on it. The village was the village. A world in its own right. A defined patch of the globe. In the foothills of Rwenzori, the village was also the village. For Mandela, Branson and Gabriel ‘the village’ was the planet.
I live in a village now. There is no school, doctors, dentists, policeman, butcher, baker, or candlestick maker. To my shame I know few people and few people know me. Virtually nobody works in the village. The shopping, the gym, the social network, the doctors, are all dispersed for miles around and have no connection to each other. At the doctors I am now an AI password.
But the question remains and is vital for all of us to ask. Where is my village now? No longer a single photograph, it is a picture made up of multiple bits of a jigsaw. Seen all together the bits are now my jigsaw-village. We now have disconnected communities within communities. My work-village. My health village. My friendship village. My consumer village.
We still have a jigsaw-village and the reason why it is important in identifying where to begin the search for elder-wisdom is that this, this village(s) is where to focus our search. If we try to embrace the whole world and the whole world’s problems it becomes too big, too impersonal. Too impossible. And we are left no further forwards in our search.
Q 2. Who are the elders?
As my recently published book and podcast A Tap On The Shoulder – How life calls us to get elder, not just older(hopefully) clearly explores, everyone gets older, but not everyone gets elder. We need to identify who the people are in our lives who are the elders, the ones who have the moral authority, courage and wisdom, to provide input into the larger pressing questions of our lives.
Cast your mind around your village(s) and with pen and notebook in hand, ask yourself who is the wisest GP you know? And if you don’t know, start asking your friends who they would recognise as not just being kind or technically good, but wise. Someone who asks you questions at a whole deeper level than other GP’s do.
Who is the wisest, most sustainable butcher, or greengrocer, for whom their produce is not just money, but their mission, their love. Jason, at our local farmers market will give you a totally different conversation about vegetables than anyone else in my village. John is the same when it comes to fish. Who is the most astute person or people in your actual village or ‘jigsaw-village’? Who are the elders in your workplace? Last week I spent a day speaking at one of the UK’s Universities and they were in the process of redundancy for 300 aging staff, who had a conservative average of 15+ years’ experience there. But nothing was being done to invest or recognise the seedbed of elders among them.
Recently, at the gym, I noticed a man who I hadn’t seen before. What caught my eye was that at every piece of apparatus and even in the jacuzzi he was breathing like a Tibetan yogi. I had never seen anyone who practiced that deep level of meditative breathing in a gym session like this man was. Never. I was mesmerised. He had a deep presence – something rarely seen in the high testosterone world of workouts. I could see in an instant that he had something to offer every single person in that gym. I bumped into him in the changing room later on and asked him where he learned such profound breathing. He told me a little of his story. Here was an elder…in the gym.
Knowing our village is the first step and then knowing the name of our various potential elders is the second.
Q 3. Where is the tree?
Whether in actual fact or in myth, you always knew where to go and meet with an elder. In Africa (generalising), they used to be seated under the large village tree. In eastern traditions they would be at the city gate. But the key point is that you knew who they were and exactly where to find them. You didn’t have to go hunting for a needle in the proverbial haystack. It wasn’t like a formal shop, or office, or anything like that, it was in the village and a place you were familiar with and knew you would find them available for conversation.
Where is the tree? Where do your potential elders hang out? Where do you need to physically go if you needed an elder-conversation? Do they hang out at the school gate or school staff room? Do they hang out in a particular coffee bar, social club, youth group, or office water cooler? One of the central elders in my life was ‘hanging out’ in a book he had written and a podcast he was guesting on. That is where I first met him. I thought, ‘here is someone I need in my life’. I googled him and found he hung out on his own website and so I emailed him there.
Q 4. What are the questions you want to talk about?
Not only do we need to identify our village(s) and who the elders are, but also where they hang out. Under which tree? Then we need to ask them. Ask them what? We need to identify our question(s). Branson and Gabriel went to Mandela with a question. The elders of the villages of the Rwenzori’s told me what the young people came to talk to them about. I went to this potential elder that I’d identified and asked him very specifically whether he took on people in an elder-mentoring capacity and if so, would he work with me. Almost every person I know who has had an eldering experience is because they took the courage to go and ask a question.
Try it, as a thought experiment.
Who is the wisest person you know, either by actual relationship or by reputation. (e.g. Most of us only know Mandela by reputation, not relationship).
Then write down the answers to this question:
“If I could have one hour with this elder, what would I ask them?’
and then push it a little further:
“If I could have one hour a month with this elder, what are the issues, challenges, and questions in my life that I would like support through?”
Where is the village?
Who are the elders?
Where is the tree?
What questions do you want to talk about?
This is the pathway to recovering elder-wisdom for our lives today.
Trevor Waldock August 2026
[1] Reuel Khoza, worked with Mandela, once wisely wrote that ‘Leaders are formed in the cradle of eldership’, which means that without elders’ leaders do not reach the potential they need to lead through these challenging and complex times