Hey,
This is Ish and today I want to talk to you about the various lessons you can learn from hanging out with people that are younger and people that are older.
So I was inspired to make this talk because recently I took a yoga class and there was a high school girl that came in and it was pretty apparent that she was pretty new to the practice and I could really see her bring all that energy into her practice and she was doing the poses,
She would try to go even deeper and really push herself and I was pretty surprised and that actually encouraged me to try a bit harder in my yoga practice.
I even saw her set up when I was leaving the room,
I saw her set up for the next class so she was taking classes back to back and these are pretty hard classes.
So that kind of reminded me of myself when I was about 18,
19 and first started to do yoga and the postures,
I had a certain intensity that I brought to my practice that I don't have at the moment just because it's been years since then and this is one of the qualities,
The great qualities of being with people that are younger is that they can inspire you to bring more energy and zeal into your practice and they can actually bring that uplifting energy as well and people that are younger tend to be more curious about everything.
So if you have like a five-year-old in the house and they're always running around curious about different things and looking around,
It's pretty much the same with most younger people,
They're just curious about new ideas,
Different possibilities and different things that they can do and another thing is obviously the energy that they bring and that can help you become more inspired to take more action and then they have a general sense of open-mindedness which is very important.
So this is a state of being open to different things because as you get older you become more set in your ways and this is also known as,
In the Zen tradition we call it having a beginner's mind which is something that's very valuable.
So as you age and are more experienced you should try to bring your mind back to what it was like as a beginner where it's full of openness,
Possibilities and trying different things out,
That's very important and as I also mentioned it's being young you have this energy of inspiring other people and then it's also very uplifting as well.
But on the flip side,
People that are younger tend to lack stability,
Groundedness,
Wisdom and they tend to be knocked off their center very easily.
So if you can think about it back when you were in high school or teenage when you were a teenager and girlfriend or boyfriend broke up with you you thought that was like the end of the world and that kind of applies to a lot of different scenarios but that's one thing that when you're younger that you're not able to build that resilience that you have which obviously comes through life and experience and that's something you can actually learn from older people.
So now if you look into studying with mentors or people that are older they aren't generally your age but typically have more experience and even more decades of experience.
So when you go to the Zen tradition usually the Zen masters are well into middle age it's not someone who's fresh out of college or high school because they understood that this person has more experience and they're able to provide wisdom through the experience.
So one of the pros of hanging out with someone who's older is that they've actually been in your shoes and they understand where you're coming from but they can also see 50 steps ahead as well.
So they can not only provide the wisdom to solve your immediate problem but rather they can foresee the next following steps and this is why people study under mentors or gurus that are a bit older because they can provide a not just the short-term solution but long-term solution because they've been there and done that.
So that's a very powerful thing and then the next is that they provide a sense of calmness and gravity.
So typically people that are older have tried different things out in their youth and they have now started to settle in a groove.
So this is where they are now authentically themselves so rather than finding themselves they have now found it and they are doubling down on it.
So they're very comfortable in their own skin and this brings forth a sense of confidence and then also a sense of groundedness so they know exactly who they are and what they want.
So if you're a bit younger you can hang out with someone who's older and they can provide that energy of just being themselves and you know if you want to contrast this a lot you can look at someone who's still in school and they're always trying to copy other people and their sense of themselves is very fluid and they don't have a sense of gravity which is very important.
It's also another important aspect and then the last thing is that you can learn and study under someone who's older as a mentor and this can help you grow in your practice in different ways.
Now on the flip side someone who's a bit older can be stuck in their ways so although it's a very good thing to know yourself to be very comfortable in your skin you can tend to kind of just follow your own routines and not break out of it and have that open-mindedness that I talked about earlier and there's also a lack of fun sometimes so this is why meditation practices can help bring out that blissfulness if you're just talking about meditation but the people who are a little bit older tend to lose that sense of fun quality in life because they take on more responsibilities and they lose that touch of spark that they had as a kid.
So if you're finding that you are with older people or people who have more experience and you're losing that sense of aliveness and spark then it's time to hang around with someone who's maybe less experienced or younger who can bring that energy forth back into you.
So it's always a balance but just know where you are and ideally it's good to have a balance of both so hanging out with people who are less experienced and younger than you then they can bring that energy that can help boost your own practice and then on the other side it's also good to have mentors people that are older than you that you can study from and actually learn and grow in your wisdom.
So it's good to have both and you'll learn different insights from hanging out with both younger people and older people.
So I hope this helps.
Thanks.
