Wednesday 15th August

It is commonly accepted that wisdom comes with age, that as one gains a maturity of years some accumulation of experience acts as a brake on the impetuosity of youthful decision making.  I am not sure though.  Maybe one does learn a certain reticence, which may well be disguising indecision and possibly any vestige of a clue whatsoever, and this slowness in passing judgment may be discerned as wisdom.  I think that actually we just learn to rationalise better, to explain away our mistakes in a different way rather than that we have actually gained any wisdom.  Time was maybe when this was true, and old farmer Jones who had worked the land for fifty years and knew how the price of wheat would always return to a median figure could exude real wisdom over his cups.  But now the world is moving so fast that old people are usually left behind at some point.  No matter how clever we silver surfers think we are there is always a point at which technology defeats us, and we just cannot be bothered to keep up anymore, so we stick with the Blackberry and cannot face an i-phone, or do not upgrade to Windows 19, or whatever will take its’ place in years to come.   And a lot of wisdom is actually just accepted wisdom rather than any innate discovery of one’s own, so as we age we simply settle for the ‘wisdom’ of others rather than come up with any of our own.  Politcians are getting younger, which may be no bad thing; you need the optimism and impatience of youth to counter all us old fogies with our ‘cannot do that’ attitude.   In a poem I once wrote the line ‘Older time begets, not wise’  and I still stick to that maxim, so don’t expect any wisdom from this old fool, just let me carry on in the same crazy way I always have done, thank you very much.