Is older really wiser?

 A patient I was visiting the other day in the hospital showed me a newspaper column written by a 90 year old reporter containing a list of 45 (!!) things she had learned about life.  It was all really cool and wise stuff. 

 What is it about growing older that compels us elders  to share our wisdom with everyone else? Maybe it's our way of compensating for the indignities of the aging process.  There has to be some pay-off for having lived this long.  But as I recover from the shock of turning 63, I remain unconvinced that wisdom is a requirement much less a measure of advancing age. Speaking solely for myself, I still seem to be grappling with those existential matters I was supposed to have learned way back in kindergarten.  As anyone brave enough to have lived with me will attest to, I'm not all that generous about sharing my toys and I have been known to impetuously plunge into certain situations before looking in both directions.  But I do love my afternoon naps.             

 I have learned a few things which (of course) I now feel compelled to share. For example,  after years of spending a lot of time and energy looking for “it” and trying to get “there” I’ve finally concluded that there is no “it” to find and there is no “there” to get to.   It took a lot of tortuous detours and dead ends before I figured out that everything meaningful I’ve ever searched for “out there” is inside of me and I am always right where I need to be even when I’m stumbling around in the dark. If that sounds suspiciously like the adage, "It's not the destination, it's the journey that matters" I offer no apology.  I'm not too proud to rip off other people's wisdom when it suits me to do so.    And I have come to believe that a certain amount of denial is actually healthy.   If it weren’t for my buddy Denial, I wouldn’t  be able to cling to the fantasy that I’m in charge of my life and I probably wouldn’t bother to get out of bed each morning.  I've also learned that failing eyesight coupled with denial is a definite advantage when it comes to looking in the mirror everyday. 


The truth is that the longer I live, the less I really know.  But the beauty of this age is that I'm less obsessed with the need to find answers to life's mysteries and am way more comfortable sitting with the questions.    Experience has taught me that if I’m willing to go with the flow  eventually ( albeit after some whining and self-pity) I’ll land on my feet.
  

 Maybe in another 27 years (I should be so lucky), I’ll have 45 nuggets of profound wisdom to share with the world should anyone care to listen, meanwhile, it's all I can do to remember what I had for breakfast. But sometimes the wisest thing of all is to laugh and unabashedly admit one's limitations.