Age and Wisdom

There’s a difference between listening to how much it hurts to fall into a pit and to fall into the pit yourself. That’s the difference between learning from textbook and learning from experience. People can warn you as much as they can, but the enlightenment is different from going thru the same shit yourself. Mistakes are costly, but mistakes are sometimes inevitable. Making those mistakes can teach you how much it hurt, how to recover from it and much more. Thru all the pitfalls, your exposure increases, and your wisdom accumulates.

However, a common misconception is that wisdom comes age. It is said in a Chinese idiom: 敬老尊贤, which means respect the elderly, honor the wise. I agree only to the “honor the wise” half of it. The assumption in that idiom is that an elder must be wise, but that is not necessarily true. It is not the age which determines one’s wisdom, but the events which one have gone thru in his life that do. If one is to do the same repetitive stuff for his whole life, in the end he is just old but not wise. However, if one has been actively trying new things and experiencing life from different perspectives, he may have already accumulated more at midlife than what the former will have in old age.

There are, of course, several variables in the discussion of age versus experience. My point is, time is necessary to accumulate that exposure and wisdom, but simply living long (or being old) doesn’t necessarily mean you are wise. In simplified terms, assuming a one-one relationship, to have an X amount of wisdom, you need to live X amount of time; but living X amount of time doesn’t mean you have X amount of wisdom.

With that said, experience can also be a double edge sword, but I’m going to sleep now, maybe I’d write more when I feel like it.