Older, but Wiser ?

A few days ago I celebrated my nth birthday. I guess I’m at a age where I would live to believe I’m young and the only ones who agree are my peers. An age when I was young, I referred to those of that age as “Old Fuddy Duddies”. And we continue to refer to people 10 years older as “Old Fuddy Duddies”. Who says Theory of Relativity doesn’t apply in real life.

And no matter how old you get, you’re never tired of receiving Happy Birthday Greetings, personally, by phone, by sms, by e-mail, on facebook, and by snail mail. Actually, I don’t think anybody bothers with snail mail anymore.  And this year, I got significantly more birthday wishes than normal. Thanks to facebook.

When you’re younger, a birthday is a day to celebrate, go out with friends and have a blast. As you get older, you tend to introspect a lot more. Which in a way is ironical, since you don’t do it when you need it. A thought that occurred to me whilst I was introspecting, on growing older. That's a give in. The question is “Do you actually grow wiser ?”. I don't know about you, but for me, the answer was a shocking, “Probably not” which I decided to dilute a little to “I don’t know”.

Since this seems to go against the grain of normal wisdom, I decided to give this more thought. Was I being cynical or could there be some truth in this. And I did, what I normally do when faced with a problem. Logicalize. A word I made up to mean, “Think through the issue using logical thinking and process”.

Growing older has 1 implication. We’ve lived a few more days on planet earth. And depending on what we do, in most cases learn a little more. The problem is that this learning is based on what we are doing. And therefore, we aren’t learning the subject but just a process. So we become efficient at doing what we are doing. We don’t necessarily become good at it. As an example, take any skill, say driving. If we don’t have our fundamentals right, then we will continue driving the way we know. And with each passing day, we’ll become more and more confident that we are doing the right thing. And keep wondering how come my cars clutch needs to be changes every 6 months, as compared to my friends who don’t bother changing it even after 2 years.

The same is true in all other aspects of life. We learn what works. And how to do it quickly. But do we ever learn how to do it right ? We just assume we know it all. A standard phrase, I’ve been doing this for 20 years. With a smirk. And an implicit suggestion that I know what I’m doing. But we forget to appreciate is that, unless we validate and improve at every stage, it could mean that we’ve become perfect at doing it wrong.

And I’m going to start examining what I’m doing, especially things I’ve been doing for ever, such as shaving, driving, eating, drinking. And whilst at it, Breathing.