Youthful
Wisdom
“I have
been finding treasure in places I did not want to search. I have been
hearing wisdom from tongues I did not want to listen. I have been
finding beauty where I did not want to look. And I have learned so
much from journeys I did not want to take...”
Suzy
Kassem (Rise Up and Salute the Sun)
Perhaps it's the effects
of age, or of too much time in silence, but lately I've been
reassessing all the notions, and ways of being, that I thought were
“settled law” within my psyche. I have always held the idea that
one gains wisdom with age, that one, simply through experience,
gathers information pertinent to the living of life. But the older I
get, the more years of experience I gather, the less sure I am of what I truly know—in
fact, I think there may be no such thing as “settled law” within
me.
I meet young people now, who are far wiser than I, whose perception of life differs from mine
simply because they're still open to new information. Their
understanding of how things work, how the powers-that-be steer the
world-ship, is both more, and less, cynical than mine. They are still
malleable, and so much better informed. They see themselves as world
citizens, and that is neither scary, nor a grandiose notion to them.
I have found within
myself too much certainty, too much judgment, too little flexibility.
I'm like the Farmer's Insurance commercial, “We've seen almost
everything, so we know how to cover almost anything.” But, seeing
almost everything doesn't mean that I have inside information or
conclusive knowledge. It only means that I have some experience with
a lot of different situations. We elders must hold open the
possibility that there is yet more to learn, to discover, to
experience, and that we may gain knowledge of life from the young.
Along with their beauty, and their energy, they have much wisdom to
impart if we have ears to hear.
In the Spirit,
Jane
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