Somebody said to me yesterday that one benefit of growing older is that it brings wisdom. My reply was ‘What use is wisdom?’ It seems to me that wisdom gives you two things:
1) It helps you to see the answers to a lot of life’s questions, only the answers aren’t actually solutions; they’re grey areas. So what you learn in many cases is that there aren’t any answers.
2) As you think you’re getting closer to finding answers, what you see beyond them is an ever growing horizon of further questions, until the number of new questions outweighs the ones for which you’ve found non-solution answers.
That’s really a lot of use, isn’t it? I think I’ll take the simple certainties, physical freedom and seemingly limitless potential of youth any time.
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6 comments:
If you're someone who likes to think, as I suspect/know you are, wisdom provides the possibility for endless enjoyment.
Er... occasional enjoyment, Maria. Hardly endless. There are plenty of times when I want to other things instead!
Having said which, I have to admit that it does make conversations more interesting sometimes - if only I can find people whose idea of what's important accords with mine.
I've always hated the saying "With age comes wisdom." I've met plenty of seemingly ancient people with turds for brains. I don't consider myself wise by no means, but compared to some people i know who also happen to be older than me by varying degrees i become the epitome of wise. Maybe i'm exaggerating a little, but really, i know a lot of stupid old people. And very few wise ones.
I have to agree with Andrea...seems like most of the people older than me are dimwitted and entrenched in their own sort of reality - a reality which usually has nothing to do with the real one (though I have to admit, sometimes that doesn't sound so bad!)
Anyhoo, I also agree with you - I'd take youth over age any day! :0)
Andrea/Jeanne: Complex issue (aren't they all?) I think it's probably true to say that wisdom is more likely to be found in older people becaue a lot of what we think of as 'wise' has a lot to do with experience.That doesn't mean, of course, that all old people are wise, nor that the deeper, more inate form of wisdom isn't just as likely to be found in the young. I've known several people in their mid-teens who are remarkably wise. I still come back to the basic point, though. What use is it, except perhaps to give people advice occasionally if they ask for it?
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