Hal - Deliberately Basic

Wisdom doesn’t automatically come with old age. Nothing does - except wrinkles. It’s true, some wines improve with age. But only if the grapes were good in the first place.
– Abigail Van Buren

Old fools were once young fools. Wisdom requires the capacity, desire, and willingness to learn, process, and retain. We are all given the external tools to acquire wisdom – organizations, spiritual and ethical institutions, books, conversation, and observation. Most people, as I have observed, have not utilized these tools to a great degree, or not at all. Instead of using what God gave us to develop critical thinking, we have evolved into a nation of opinionatives (my word). Or worse, apathetic and passionless.

After I reached 50, I looked back and didn’t see myself a wiser man, in the sense of imparting wisdom to others. Learning has been an avocation for me, and continues, but true wisdom is more than accumulating knowledge. Wisdom is the ability one has to utilize experience and knowledge with common sense and insight. In fact, I feel less qualified to impart wisdom as I age. Gandhi, the quintessential sage and older fellow said, “It is unwise to be too sure of one’s own wisdom.” An interesting article in The New York Times questions that wisdom can even be defined. Note, you must register to read this article.

Many people I know never change their opinion, even in the face of indisputable facts (George Bush comes to mind). For example, do you feel the same about social environment as you did 30 years ago? If your answer was yes you have not learned much, and are not accepting of change. Are you still pissed off about Japanese cars in the US? Your global business wisdom is, generously stated, deficient.

I have known older folks who were exceedingly eager to bestow their wisdom on the young whippersnappers who haven’t lived long enough to learn much of anything. In nearly every instance I’ve seen, their wisdom was a colossal load of bullshit. What these people thought of as wisdom was in fact mere opinion. My opinion on opinions is, no one gives a damn about your opinion unless they ask for it.

I am more than happy to help anyone with my knowledge and experience at this point in my life, but only if I am asked. Qualifying my advice with, “This is what I would do…” or, “In my experience…” is a good lead in to imparting wisdom. This is true even if you are certain of your answer, and you are watching your grown children circling the drain. There is a fine line between the wise and the foolish.

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