AHSS Gift of Years: Wisdom (Lesson 21)

“In youth we learn, in age we understand” is a quote from Mary von Ebner-Eschenbach that she wrote when she was seventy-five years old. This shows an understanding of the function of aging and the role of the elderly. Understanding is the bedrock of a society. It enables us to see why we do what we do, and to realize why we cannot do what we want to do in all instances. It is in the development of understanding for the next generation, in the cocreation of the world, that the older generation has so serious a role to play.

The service of the elders is not a service of labor, it is a service of enlightenment, of wisdom, of discernment of spirits. Only the carriers of generations past can give us those things because wisdom is what lasts after an experience ends. This period in life, when we finally get to the point that we really understand some things about living well, is when we feel most out of it. It is, far too often, exactly the time when people who know more than they have ever known begin to feel useless. Everything that ever gave us status or influence at all has simply dried up, disappeared, or moved on.

Clearly our role has changed. But to what? For what purpose? What are we to anyone now that we are nothing at all of the things we once thought were so important? In fact, the moment of apparent disengagement is exactly the moment when we become most important to the world around us.

We are beyond being replaceable. We cannot be replaced. The unique understandings and beliefs we have come to are beyond substitution. They are the things of the soul. The elder’s role is to be what we have discovered about life. Our responsibility is wisdom. Having lived through and experienced all the societal expectations and responsibilities, only our elders have the insight to know what is needed or what should be avoided. Only our elders can show us all another way to live.

Researchers tell us that Americans have much less reflection time than almost any other culture in the modern world. The elderly, by living at a more leisurely pace, by taking the time to read again, to pursue new questions, by involving themselves in the discussions of the day, can bring to us a wisdom that comes from experience. Older people have what this world needs most: the kind of experience that can save the next generation from the errors of the one before them. The older generation know that the only thing that is good for any of us in the long run is what is good for all of us right now. Why must the elders in a society immerse themselves in the issues of the time? If for no other reason that they are really the only ones who are free to tell the truth.

Sister Joan says: A burden of these years is to accept the notion that nothing can be done to save a people when a younger generation is in charge. A blessing of these years is to have the opportunity to take on the role of thinker, of philosopher, of disputant, of interrogator, of spiritual guide in a world racing to nowhere, with no true human goal and no lived wisdom in sight.

1. Who has been a wisdom figure in your life? What did he or she help you realize?
2. Pray these lines from Psalm 51 and sit with them for a few minutes: “Out of your glory send Wisdom to be with me and to work with me. Wisdom knows and understands all things and will guide and protect me in all I do.” Share a time in your life when you felt Wisdom was with you.