Article 1 - "SOMETIMES WITH AGE, SOMETIMES COMES WISDOM" May 2007 edition of First Church of The Streets

    Wisdom comes with age. At least, that's how the saying goes. Through the passage of time, a person should learn from his experiences. Then he or she can pass to the younger generations fountains of sage advice. Eastern societies in particular venerate the old, viewing their lives as being an example to be watched and their words to be heeded. Western societies, despite having a surface ethos of being a "youth-orientated" culture, have their ways of respecting aged wisdom. In the United States, Bill Clinton was considered young when he took the office of presidency at the age of forty-six, and more recently, in 2004, fifty-one year old presidential candidate John Edwards was considered young and inexperienced, at least in comparison to more seasoned candidates such as sixty-one year old John Kerry. So, even if youth is celebrated in the cultures of visible media such as entertainment and modeling, aged wisdom seems to be more valued in the arenas of Western power, at least up until a point.

    Does age automatically confer wisdom upon a person, a universal truism that leads a person through the path of his or her life? It certainly would make sense, the idea being that a person has lived through many things, and hence has an idea what an experience is intended to teach. And if that is true, the more experiences a person has, the wiser he would be. The older he is, the more experiences he has. Thus, age has bestowed a wisdom upon this person that he wouldn't have if he had been younger. Regardless of what the content is in this person's life, wisdom should be an end product of a life journey well-lived.

    But, of course, there are two operative phrases in this case: "should" and "well-lived". A life culminating in wisdom is not automatically guaranteed like Uncle Sam and the Grim Reaper. Wisdom assumes several things: experience, a willingness to learn, and a life that expresses these lessons as time goes on. The synthesis of these aspects leads to deeper wisdom and insight. If one component is missing, it is like the proverbial cake that collapses because it was missing the yeast, and can't be wished for just because one has reached a "certain age".

    The first premise, experience, is really one of the most important components. For without experience, there would be no foundation. Because it is such an important foundation, many people think it suffices, for without experience, there is nothing, and of course, everything in its own way is some type of experience. Experience is the kind of thing that one can use as a reflecting glass in which one can see how the images measure up to his vision. Most people are aware on some cognitive level that experience can be a teacher, and that mistakes and travails sometimes are stronger teachers than joy and success.

    But sometimes, people want to avoid certain experiences just because they are afraid of the unknown, such as trying a different job or expanding a spiritual relationship with a higher power. This goes beyond the normal caution of not jumping off a cliff without a parachute or trying narcotics that have been established as addictive and dangerous. Supplanting the desire to expand experience is a means to squelch the growth that would come from that. Although this avoidance is a type of experience in itself, because it is based on hiding from growth or anything new, it fails to confer the wisdom that comes from the experience intended to expand one's personal horizons. This is in contrast to the Preacher quest for wisdom: "I applied my heart to know, to search and seek out wisdom and the reason of things, to know the wickedness of folly, even of foolishness and madness" (Eccl. 7: 25-26, NKJV). A life of running from experiences and refusing to look at what is around oneself will not lead to a life of wisdom, regardless of age or what the outside package seems to say.

    The other obvious obstacle to a person's wisdom is the person who blunders her way through life, and seems to never learn anything. The worst case scenario in this case is a person who keeps on making mistakes leading to her downfall, and yet, in every case as far as she is concerned, someone else is entirely to blame for her predicament. This lack of insight to a person's behavior is a barrier to a lifetime of self-knowledge and will probably only lead a person to absorb the lesson of you'd better get the jerks first before they get you, not having a clue how she contributes to the whole jerk-like dynamic that poisons her life. Certainly, a life of experience without insight to one's motivations leads to some kind of lesson. However, a vehement finger-pointing at every person but herself could hardly be construed as real wisdom in any case but the one who is blind to her own motivations.

    Then there is the premise of a life that is "well-lived". A person doesn't need to be a saint to have a well-lived life, though one doesn't have to be a complete rogue just to prove that he's "experienced" life, either. In the premise of the Preacher's words, it is seeking wisdom in all experiences to learn and grow no matter what is presented as an option in one's life. Wisdom, in this sense, is what a person gains when he sees insight into who he is and what his reactions to any given thing mean in the dynamics of life that are presented to him. It certainly isn't a question of blame, thinking it "must be all my fault", because this exaggeration is as much escapism from real wisdom as insisting that everything is everyone else's fault.

    It has more to do with a sense of balance, of realizing how one's decisions impacts both the outside around her, and the world within her spirit. Through this willing to live the examined life, a person sees what she can gain in growing deeper into her own heart, soul, and mind, and how she can better impact those around her. She can then choose a different reaction, or a different thought based on the lessons she has learned from this experience, rather than react to other people in fear and blame them for the whole thing later on.

    If a person realizes he can always change his experience through his personal reactions, even if he is living through extreme oppression, his life experience truly becomes his. Thus, the lessons he learns transforms him into a more sage individual than before he had his experience. Through ingesting the lessons of life and letting them transform him, this is how a person becomes older with wisdom. Otherwise, he just becomes older, and becomes so confused in his blame game that he doesn't even know who is to blame anymore, experiencing the culmination of a life of evasion.