Growing Wiser
“I believe that as people grow older, they grow wiser--and indeed want to grow wiser, as if to make good use of life's final years. We obscure that fact when we insist that wisdom is a rare and exalted quality that few can achieve. In fact, it is everywhere around us. Wisdom happens. It happens as simply and naturally as learning happens in children. Just as children cannot help but learn with every breath they take, so people, as they age, cannot help but to become wise. Wisdom is that same act of learning as we go forward in life--with one difference. It is sufficient for children to greet the world with wonder; elders must add reflection--and they do, quite spontaneously, because they have a broadening base of experience to draw upon for comparison and questioning.
Wisdom is examined experience, examined in the same way Socrates examined all that his pupils said, helping them find their way through their thoughts, offering a word of criticism here, a word of encouragement there, bringing them to view the values and presuppositions that underlay their beliefs with discriminating distance. Wisdom grows from any ordinary life, provided that life is taken seriously and brought under reflection. That is all wisdom is, yet it is infinitely precious and wholly indispensable to growing up.”
Source: THEODORE ROSZAK America the Wise: The Longevity Revolution and the True Wealth of Nations
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