The Youthful Imperative

Alan Watts once said, "Now I’m a grandfather, and so I am no longer in awe of grandfathers." If I liked this 20 years ago, when I first heard it, today it teases a secret I feel obligated to share with my young brothers and sisters.

Old people like to say we've gained wisdom. We have better judgment; a longer view. Our superior familiarity has brought us perception and patience. We're slower to inflame, whether with anger or passion.

But the truth is, we're just tired.

Reviewing my twenties, I'm astonished by the heat of my prejudices, my penchant for assigning the role of villain to so many in my environment, my disrespectful impatience.

But I also remember how instinctively willing I was to break eggs, confront hypocrisy, power over and through impediments. Get crap done.

That irritated authority. And that brought pain. And, in surprisingly short order, that produced dread.

Eventually I slipped into idle middle-aged cowardice. AKA that "philosophical perspective" old people are so proud of.

Which is why humanity remains mired to the shoulders in solvable problems. Because our seniority gave us the power to hamstring those younger, and our terror of consequences, the motivation.

So now old people peeve me a lot more than they did before I was one. In my youth I took it for granted that their self-vaunted wisdom must be grounded at a least a little in reality.

And it is, a little.

But mostly it's just self-serving fear and laziness.

Let us meditate upon this uncomfortable truth:

When age brings humility, that's probably wisdom.
When it brings self-satisfaction, that's probably a learning disability.

Old age is an excellent time to practice don't-know-mind. You know, that thing we seldom embrace in our rhetoric and voting record. Because our task is to accept that we had our chance, and that the courage, vision, determination, and primal strength of the young is what we need now. Their willingness to rise to a challenge, even if they get a few things wrong. Even if – nightmare of senescence – they incur some personal damage.

This is their evolutionary role, their responsibility, their crucial contribution. Worry not, unproductive ones: they too will stumble into their day of wan platitudes; their age of weary wisdom.

But for now, they must bring – and we must honour – the dauntless insight of their youth.

Because someone has to actually do something around here.


(Classic meme courtesy of Alex Leo and Wikimedia Commons.)