Does Wisdom Come With Age (Maybe)

Does wisdom come with age? Maybe. While there's a comforting adage in the silver lining of a wrinkled brow, age alone isn't a ticket to the sage club. True wisdom requires more than mere chronometers clicking; it's a dance of experience, reflection, and a dash of humility. Sure, years gather knowledge, a library accumulated on life's dusty shelves. But wisdom whispers in the margins, born from grappling with that knowledge, turning it over in open hands, and accepting its flickering shadows. Some souls, young or old, have an uncanny knack for this waltz, while others, even with age's gentle hand, remain tangled in the threads of their experience. So, does age bring wisdom? It can, like fertile soil waiting for the right seed. But in the end, it's the heart's soil that truly matters, its openness to life's lessons, not the mere passage of time.

Transcript

Welcome to the Happiness Podcast.

I'm Dr.

Robert Puff.

Does wisdom necessarily come with age?

Maybe.

I think it's a pretty popular adage that as we get older we're probably gonna get wiser.

I mean after all we have more experiences,

We see more,

We've gone through more,

And we should presumably be wiser as we get older.

But if we're somewhat observant we probably also know in many cases this is not true.

This is simple enough to prove and I like it when you can prove it for yourself.

Think about the people in your life.

They're at the wee end of their life.

And are your relatives all wise?

Probably not.

But I do believe most of us want to become more wise as we get older.

I think this is a good goal.

I think this is a realistic goal.

And yet so many people don't seem to achieve it.

Why is that?

So in today's talk we want to explore two things.

One,

Why don't we often get wiser as we get older?

And two,

How do we become more wise as we get older?

Because I believe this is a very good goal to strive for.

If you go to your local dictionary I think you'll find that it breaks wisdom into three parts.

One is the quality of having experiences.

Two,

Knowledge.

And three,

Good judgment.

What it means by that is,

I believe,

Is that we have experiences as we go through life.

And through these experiences we learn things,

We have knowledge,

And hopefully through these experience and this knowledge we gain good judgment in order to live our lives well.

So as we go through life we have experiences.

Some good,

Some not so good.

And hopefully as we go through them we learn,

We grow,

And we gain knowledge.

And then hopefully also we learn what to do and what not to do.

How to make good choices,

Kind choices,

Loving choices,

Choices that improve our lives and the lives of those around us.

So perhaps when we're in elementary school or junior high or high school or even college,

We go there and we get teased for something and it hurts our feelings.

And we realize that we don't like that behavior.

So when a new kid enters our school,

We befriend them because we realize they may be ostracized and teased too.

And we can help alleviate their suffering by being their friend.

Or here's another common experience I think a lot of people go through.

Their parents weren't perfect.

Their parents may have gotten divorced.

They may have been not always kind.

And so now that they're married and they have their own family,

They learn from their parents mistakes and do things differently.

So they're not going to repeat what happened to them.

That's wisdom.

It seems so simple.

We have experiences.

Some of them are hard.

We learn from them and we grow.

But why doesn't it work this way?

Why do so many people seem not to learn from their experiences?

I remember once talking to a lady who I considered wise,

But she shared a story in a period of her life where she wasn't as wise as she wished she had been.

And what had happened was both her parents were alcoholic and they drank a lot.

Sometimes they wouldn't even come home.

And it was really hard for her because she had to basically raise her and her younger brother.

And with her parents drinking,

She was exposed to a lot of dysfunctional,

Painful experiences.

And she really hated the alcohol and what it did to her parents.

But then when she hit high school,

One day her parents were gone and she found the stash of their alcohol.

And she started drinking it.

And she thought,

Oh this is fun.

I like this.

And sadly she went through a period of time where she acted much like her parents.

And though it was a very challenging,

Difficult time for her,

Thankfully she was able to overcome her desire for drinking alcohol and change her life.

And she became wiser.

So one of the key components of wisdom is going through,

Experiencing,

Or seeing difficult situations that arise in life.

And then watching other people overcome them or overcoming them ourselves.

But the difficulty becomes that we don't always do that.

We can choose other paths to go down instead.

When challenges come,

We can numb ourselves and just not even think about it.

We can act in a negative way,

In the same way that the experience was negative towards us.

We can be enraged and push that rage towards other people.

We can just forget about it,

Suppress it,

And never think about it,

Even though it's still there,

Harboring in our hearts the pain and suffering.

You may have perhaps seen or heard about this story.

A young girl is raised by a very abusive alcoholic father who beats her,

Calls her horrible names,

And finally out of desperation,

She runs away from home.

But because she's younger and has few skills,

She does need help.

So she may run into the arms of someone who cares for her and loves her.

And you know,

There's a lot of people out there that would help her and truly,

From the bottom of their hearts,

Even love her.

But so often,

Who does she go to?

Not always,

But often she'll go to someone just like her father because she hasn't learned.

The wisdom hasn't kicked in yet.

And that's where wisdom teaches us to learn from our past and to grow.

But when we numb ourselves,

We don't learn.

When we don't look at what happened and say,

Okay,

How do I do this differently?

We don't learn.

I don't know if you ever heard of the comic strip Calvin and Hobbes.

It's a very cute strip about this young boy and his tiger friend.

Well,

One time they're going down this hill on a wagon and they're going very fast.

But they're approaching a cliff and it's dangerous and it's a long ways down.

And Hobbes is telling Calvin,

We need to stop.

We need to slow down.

Something bad's gonna happen.

And Calvin says,

I don't want to think about it.

I just want to have fun.

And they keep going and getting closer and closer.

And finally they go over the cliff.

They land at the bottom and their bodies are a mangled mess.

And you see Hobbes looking over at Calvin ready to say,

I told you so.

And Calvin screams at him,

I don't want to think about it.

Life is hard and sometimes we make it hard.

We do things that cause us to suffer,

That cause us pain.

But wisdom tells us to learn from it.

One of the things I love to teach my clients in my practice is not to beat themselves up over when they make mistakes,

But instead say this over and over again.

What can I learn from this?

How can I grow from this?

That's the key of wisdom.

We all make mistakes and sometimes we make really big ones.

But the secret of life is learning from them,

Growing from them.

Not beating ourselves up,

But learning and growing.

But the thing we have to be very careful is,

Is to numb ourselves from our negative experiences.

We all have them.

We do.

Sooner or later we're gonna have some big ones.

But we learn from them,

We grow from them.

If we numb ourselves,

We're gonna stay stuck.

Think of this.

Imagine that we don't have any pain sensors on our body.

Then when we hit something that's sharp or could cause injuries,

We don't even care.

We don't protect our bodies and we probably won't live that long unless we have pain sensors because then we don't do things to keep our bodies safe.

As we go through life,

We're going to have negative experiences.

We all are.

The key of it is to learn from them,

To grow from them.

But why we see so many people that don't seem to be getting wiser with age?

Because they're not learning from their mistakes.

Mostly they're ignoring them,

They're numbing from them,

Or they're bitter.

They're just not turning those mistakes,

Those challenges,

Into growth opportunities.

And we're here to grow.

So how do we do that?

I want to talk about a couple things that are really helpful in regards to growth.

Well,

One is,

As we have experiences,

We learn from them.

As I said,

We look at them,

We examine them,

We say,

Hmm,

I do that better.

I was married to my high school sweetheart,

We got divorced,

So I want to be married again.

How do I learn from what went wrong?

What could I do differently?

How do I pick someone that is a better fit for me?

Or let's say we're in a job that we really don't like.

We decide to quit.

Now we don't have a job.

But we say,

Okay,

How do I learn from this?

How do I make sure the next job is a better fit for me,

That creates more happiness in my life?

We're going to have challenges.

They're just not going to get around that.

The key of it is to really examine the challenges and see the growth opportunities.

How do I grow?

How do I adapt?

That's one of the main keys for becoming wise,

Is learning from previous experiences and applying it to our future.

It's so pivotal to not judge,

But to learn.

Not to criticize,

But to explore other options for the future.

And of course,

Never giving up.

Realizing we can keep getting better and better.

That's one of the great things about wisdom.

There's no end to how wise we can get.

And I want to talk about one last thing.

How do we get very wise?

And I think you're gonna like this one.

It's a good one to practice.

You may not have thought of,

But I think you'll find it both exciting and really helpful in our path towards becoming wise.

I want to start by telling you about a movie I saw many years ago.

It came out in 2006.

It was a blockbuster at the time.

And it came out of Bollywood.

Those are movies that are done in India.

And it's called,

In English,

Keep Going Munna Bro.

In Hindi.

And I'm gonna mutilate this,

But I'll give it a try.

Lage Raho Munna Bhai.

I'll have the title in the description if you want to watch it.

It's really good.

And though it's not in English,

You can still watch it because it has subtitles.

And if you ever watch a Bollywood movie,

It has a lot of really good music in it too.

It's about a gangster.

A really tough guy that no one messes with.

Well,

In the process of the story,

He ends up starting to be visited by Gandhi.

The spirit of Gandhi.

And because Gandhi,

Of course,

Was a very powerful wise sage,

He starts taking on some of his characteristics.

And as the movie goes on,

He becomes more and more a sage like Gandhi.

And because he's talking to and learning about Gandhi,

He starts becoming wise like Gandhi.

At one point,

He's hosting a radio talk show where people can call in.

Where he's sharing his wisdom of Gandhi.

And a girl calls in,

A young girl,

Who wants to get married.

And she's going on these dates that are arranged.

And she says,

How do I know who to marry?

They all act very nicely.

It may not be after I marry them.

And he tells her,

Through Gandhi,

That don't look at how he treats you.

Because of course he's going to treat you very nicely.

Look at how he treats the waiter and everyone around him.

That's what matters.

And she realizes he's right.

And she doesn't marry the guy that she's on a date with.

So the key point of wisdom for us is to learn from others.

And how we do that is by we ourselves deciding.

Not what people tell us.

We decide,

I think that person is pretty wise.

It's important that you value that person.

Whether it's a person from history.

Whether it's a person alive today that's a public figure.

Whether it's someone you personally know.

And you say,

Wow that person is really wise.

And you see in their actions wisdom.

And then you begin to learn from them.

Watching them.

Studying them.

Seeing what they do.

Learning from their behavior.

There's so many different people we can turn to.

And the key is to really start emulating their behavior.

Trying to do what they do.

And perhaps even better than they do at some point.

And it really doesn't matter who it is.

Just find someone that you believe in.

That you trust.

That you think,

Yes that's a wise person.

And then ask yourself,

What would they do?

Have you ever seen the stickers?

They're pretty popular.

And I've seen them around the world.

Sometimes I say,

What would Jesus do?

Sometimes I say,

What would Buddha do?

Whoever it would be.

Whatever it be.

What would my mother do?

What would my grandmother do?

What would Marcus Aurelius do?

What would Muhammad do?

Whoever you value.

It's important that you value who they are.

And you think they lived a good life.

And they were wise.

And then again learn about what they did.

Start trying to be like them.

Or act like them.

You may not be able to be like them.

But you can act like them.

You can say,

Okay how do I learn from these experiences?

How do I grow?

I really like this one.

There's so many great teachers throughout history.

And I think we all know someone who we think is pretty wise.

Sitting down with them.

Talking to them.

Taking them for lunch.

Learning their secrets.

Saying,

How do you do that?

I remember once,

A woman I met years and years ago,

Was a friend of mine.

I never saw her get mad.

I thought,

How does she do that?

And I said,

How do you do that?

She said,

Well I actually do get mad.

I just choose to be quiet.

Decide what I'm gonna do with those feelings.

And then do something with them.

So I learned to pause through her.

She was a teacher of mine.

And often we're gonna have a lot of teachers in life.

I'm hoping you learn a little bit from me.

But the key of it is,

We can all be wise.

We have to be careful not to numb ourselves when things happen.

Particularly bad things.

We need to be careful to say,

What can I learn from this?

And then we also need to look to others who are wise as teachers.

Or at least as people that we can follow and behave as they do.

And perhaps even periodically say,

What would this person do in this tough situation?

Because we know the wise ones of the world,

They truly can handle anything.

And we can too.

No matter what we're going through right now,

There's always a solution.

And if we seek to grow,

Which I think is really important.

If we seek to be wise,

Which I think is one of the critical features of being a human being,

Is to be wise.

Then we'll find that our lives will be filled with wonder,

Joy,

And wisdom.

Thank you for joining me on the Happiness Podcast.

Until next time,

Accept what is,

Love what is.

Reviews

Thank you Dr. Puff. Sending good wishes. 🌻

Such sage advice. Thanks so much for your kindness! :-)

Excellent podcast Dr Puff!

Thank you Robert!

You are so wise . Age certainly gives us time to think and learn if we want to of course. You are reiterating exactly how I think, and hopefully many others.

Really interesting. It so happens that exactly this topic is going to be what we’re going to discuss in the next English conversation class I teach. Thank you so much!🙏🍀❤️