St. Augustine, in a discourse on St. John, saw two different kinds of lives to be lived by two different kinds of people.  He personified these in St. Peter's life of action on a pilgrimage through a 'foreign land', and St. John's quiet contemplation in the realm of the spirt. 

But those two kinds of life can be lived by the same person, first in their young active years and then in their quiet older years.

In our pilgrimage through the foreign land that is this world,  we acquire knowledge and experience.  In our older years, if we are blessed with inner quietude, we can contemplate in companionship with the Holy Spirit, and turn the things we have learned in life into timeless wisdom.

It is for this wisdom from a long life of experience and what has been learned over generations, that the Navajo treasure their elders.

Children who do not have the wisdom, guidance, and loving companionship of elders, have lives without a foundation.

St. Augustine's
Discourse on the Two Different Lives
With an Different Way for the Modern World
by DLW