experience
Think of it this way.
At just about every point in life most people think they are smart and have it figured out. As you get older and experience and learn more, you realize how wrong you were.
It's not how smart you are it's how dumb you were.
Or refusing to learn from the experiences and continuing forward with the stupidity.
And, Paul, it's not a matter of suffering and torment over the years, but, for me, more of matter of wisdom.
We have a tendency to qualify and quantify with numbers. Does being 80 make you more wise than being 40 given the experiences that some people have?
Personally, I've never had a ton of money. If I ever do, hopefully I'll have the wisdom to seek the advise of someone who has and not squander it all buying crap just for crap's sake. If that means turning to someone who has more experience, yet is a lot younger than I, then so be it. Even though that person may not have quantifiable "years of experiences" he'd definitely have more "experience in the years" than I would have, at say, twice his age.
I'll give you an example, using two people I know. We'll call them Person A and Person B. These gentleman are separated by only a few years in age, both around 70.
Person A is college educated, financially well-off, retired from a six digit career of the past 40 years. Person A was so consumed with his career and the money he thought he needed that for the majority of his children's lives he was absent, preferring to work. Even though his job was 9-5 he took a lot of overtime or brought the work home with him and did it in his office, not spending much time with his kids at all.
Person A is full of advise. One of his favorite ways to start a sentence is with "You need to..." And he gets pissed when you don't take the advice that you really didn't ask for to begin with. Person A also likes to give lectures. He'll lecture you on just about everything at the drop of a hat, especially when it comes to money. Person A, though, has managed his money very well over the years and is willing to use it to help those who need it. He made sure that if something happens to him his wife will have no financial difficulties.
Person A really only knows one thing and that's what his career was, but if you hand him google he's suddenly an expert on any given topic and we'll give you a dissertation on that topic. Before google it was all about encyclopedias. And the almighty google is never wrong and qualifies him as the premier expert on any given topic.
Person A also likes to insert himself in his children's marriages, telling them how and what their relationships should be like based on his own relationship.
Person A calls me on the phone trying to fix a car, asking my opinion and gets pissed when I tell him he's off base and should try something else. He's unwilling to accept the help afterwards because he wasn't calling because he truly wanted to know, he was calling to have someone tell him he was right. He uses the phrase "I don't know," grudgingly as an affront to his intellect.
Person B is retired from a lifetime of career changes. He's wore several hats in his life and most of his knowledge didn't come from books or google, but from doing. He'll study the books when he has to, if he wants to learn something knew, and he'll seek out those who know more to ask them questions to help him understand. He is a high school drop out, not even completing the 11th grade. He never made more than $50,000 a year in his life and his retirement is very much a fixed income. Yet he, like Person A, makes sure his wife doesn't go without. But if something happens to him his children will have to take care of their mother.
Person B spent a lot of time with his kids growing up. Even if his jobs at various stages pulled him away from home for long periods of time, he made sure to spend quality time being a father to them.
Person B hardly ever gives advise unless it's asked for. He'll share his experiences and his knowledge when someone comes seeking him out. And he has quite a lot of knowledge.
Person B doesn't interfere in his children's lives. His philosophy is that he and his wife did a good job at raising the kids, it's now up to the kids to make decisions for themselves.
Person B has a question about working on his car and calls me to see if he's on the right track. If he's off base he's willing to accept that he off base and asks questions as to why he might be wrong. He's also very willing to use the the words "I don't know," as a matter of fact.
Now, again, these two gentleman are separated by only a few years in age. Who would you consider the wiser? Who might you consider to have the most "experience in the years?"
I know, I know. It's an existential question. It's definitely a question that has no black or white but is all shades of grey and how each one of us interrupts it. But I've had time to be existential lately. Just thought I'd share to see how some of my brothers and sisters on here might interrupt things differently.
It's something I've been hearing a lot lately as I've talked about what Sarah and I are going through, my outlook on life at the moment, how this experience has changed me, from the man I was just a few short weeks ago. My pastor said it when he came up to visit yesterday... "Robert, you're wise beyond your years."
I've tried to be fair in my above assessments of each gentleman, but I think by my writings you'll see whom I consider to be the wisest of the two, the one with the most "experience in the years."
And, no I won't tell you who they are.