Wisdom

Now that I’m old, I’m supposed to have somehow miraculously gained wisdom.  Is it because I have little scalp hair and what’s left is painted with shoe polish to make me “feel” younger? Is it because my life has gone though some valuable path of experience that gives me some insight I feel compelled to impose on the rest of humanity?  Or is it that I have earned a scratchy arrogance for having survived almost 66 years of life, independent and in good health with increasingly diverse interests and activities, not obese, not overly cynical, and with friends and family to play and console with and very little to worry about?  Certainly, when you look at someone without wrinkles in their 20’s and 30’s, wisdom is not the first thing you think about.  Maybe everyone who looks old has some wisdom to impart.  More likely, everyone who looks old has something to reveal.

I have been searching very hard over the last few years to find the “wisdom” that I have gained in my medium size life.  The problem is I just can’t find it anywhere I look.   I’ve looked under the bed, in the bathroom, on the floor, in my car port, on my computer, iPad, iPhone, and even in my mailbox.  Nothing has been found anywhere to help me.  Then yesterday, I finally admitted the obvious to myself.  The wisdom that I have gained in my life is that there is almost nothing that I have learned in my life that has any more value or wisdom than anyone else in the world…man or woman, of any color, of any age, of any religion, of any profession. 

I am hard pressed to argue even a philosophical point with either of my children, they know tons more than me, and even when they display terrible lapses of judgment (hopefully not often), they always have a convincing story to justify it.  I certainly cannot ever expect to solve computer problems that a 10 year old finds instinctive, my dance teacher is probably half my age and I continue to be awed by what she knows and what she can do.   Children are smarter and more adaptable, young adults have a much greater capacity to work and multitask, nobody my age can compete in ANY athletic sport with anyone much younger.  Colleagues who are decades younger than me know so much more than I did at their age, and there is almost nothing I can contribute to them other than a historical perspective…as long as my memory serves me.  My diet is good but is it as good as the emerging generation of youth who have fanatically become health conscious, having witnessed my generation waste their lives and clog their coronary arteries with lard and their lungs with soot.   There is nothing I can think of that gives me, after living almost 66 years of life, anything to write home about except for one thing.

And that is - that I no longer need to work full time and in fact need not work even part time if I chose not to.  Not everyone younger needs to work or chooses to work, but some people my age have been at least partially successful in reaching some degree of financial independence to allow them to do the things they want to do, when they want to do it, and with whom they want to do it.  At least this is in theory, if not in practice.  What it has given me is the time to discover that beyond this, I have no particular wisdom or insight in life that would be worth professing to the world.  

Thus, I now accept and proclaim the reality of my being that I have never gained any special wisdom that came automatically with age.  Maybe, I harbored some subconscious expectation that it would somehow spontaneously materialize - or that I would receive a slice or sample of wisdom as an attachment to my social security check like the little toys that were faithfully included in our Cracker Jack  boxes.  I will give up on this notion as well. 

Hummm, maybe this self realization, is after all, what wisdom is all about???  That there is no such thing as wisdom.......I think I’ll ask Usain Bolt.