Maturity, Wisdom, and Experience
Now that I have reached a milestone in my age, I feel it fitting to discuss it, if every so briefly. I have realized that I have a great deal to be incredibly thankful for, especially right now in my life. Between my career, family, friends and so many other pieces, I am satisfied and excited to be in my life where it is. With this, I have found myself in the wonderful space called retrospect, and I enjoy it. I’ve been looking at experiences and my choices and seeing the paths that each choice forged or followed. The one thing I come across is that wise voice of a parent or mentor or ‘adult’ giving me their sage advice. There were times that I followed that advice, and there were times that I didn’t. In either case, I know that the bit of wisdom imparted upon me was not unfounded. I can’t recall whether or not each piece of advice made sense to me at the time, but there are many things that make sense to me now.
This brings me to the conclusions I’ve drawn from my thought patterns. Knowing what my experience has been, and knowing that I’m fiercely independent, makes me realize that trusting my ‘elders’ is not entirely unfounded. I think I’ve taken experience for granted. There are many places I can go with maturity, and many people with whom I can communicate. However, I can only get so far without the experience to back me up. I hope in the future I can stop, listen, and simply make the effort to understand the advice of those who may have more life experience than me.
This isn’t to say that anyone older earns my respect de facto. I hope that the experience that I have had thus far in life has given me the ability to discern wisdom of experience from the folly of years wasted. I suppose that discerning, in general, is important. I also suppose that there will be times that advice will be given, and I will not be ready to heed or understand it, and it will go by like another phrase. All of this reminds me of a lyric from the “Sunscreen Song” produced back in the late 90’s, which is what I will leave you with:
Be careful whose advice you buy, but be patient with those who supply it. Advice is a form of nostalgia. Dispensing it is a way of fishing the past from the disposal, wiping it off, painting over the ugly parts, and recycling it for more than it’s worth.”