By Mark Antony Rossi
We’ve been told “youth is wasted on the young.” The implication being older people deserve more time on Earth to impart vast amounts of wisdom they have collected over the years. Is this a jealous refrain from the retirement community? It’s a sad fact the more we are given, the more we waste.
But what if our impression of the older generation is flat wrong. What if they are hyper-resistant to change? What if they were active partners in problems from the past? What if they never matured past the white color of their hair?
I am speaking of men in this laundry list of disappointment. I have yet to find a mature woman who wasn’t a firebolt of tested experience and wise council. Men, on the other hand, have an ego to bruise and feelings to fracture. And we should expect their recollections to be convenient and their current advice to be most inconvenient.
There is truth to wisdom being a better part of older age. But is it fair to wonder if Wisdom is wasted on a group of people unwilling to deliver these lessons with any coothe. Imagine impatience being the sole barrier to greater understanding.
My numerous experiences with the older crowd leaves me exasperated and exhausted. Maybe I expect more because I bought into the aged adages of deferred respect and the common perception of the aged being repositories of knowledge.
Maybe I need to take heed of the enormous difference between knowledge and wisdom. And trying to retrieve teaching moments from senior moments might be pushing patience and impossible legacy to the breaking point.
As with Science and Religion — the Aged do not have quick answers to our present-day problems. Perhaps it’s unrealistic to dream someone out there may offer solace. It’s a human weakness that leaves us vulnerable to yo-yo diets and get-rich schemes. Some say find the solutions in Self. Some say find it in a Higher Power. Whichever direction you choose in the end — the decision is still yours.
About the Author: Mark Antony Rossi is a poet, playwright and author of the bioethics volume “Dark Tech” now available from Amazon. His most recent plays have been produced in Liverpool and New York.
http://ethical-stranger.webnode.com/
Offering advice out of wisdom earned through experience is a nice proposition so long as it’s received with the reverence it deserves!
Quite often they meet with unwelcome response, through the indifferent attitude of the targeted!
It’s for the younsters to relish the wisdom or not, and take it in the perspective right!
Compulsion or force won’t serve the purpose intended!
And the advice-dispensers need not worry about its non-acceptane at all!