With age comes wisdom knowledge and experience - Really??

[angelandbump]

Like I said in the title - With age comes wisdom knowledge and experience

Do you actually believe this?

 

[smelly07]

I 100% believe it, as you get older you experience and learn more and become wiser. x

 

[angelandbump]

I personally don't. Don’t get me wrong I think everyone has different experiences that determines their knowledge but I don’t think it is fair to assume that just because a person is older, that they know more.

I work with a women who one said to me "what do you know, you have no life experience"

My response to her was “How many 'older women' have went through the sudden loss of a long term partner and tried to save his life alone? And how many 'older women' have also lost a child” She couldn’t respond to me but everyone else in the office sent me an email to say well done.
The only extra experience she got personally with age is the amount of times you have seen a sun rise or set.
I understand that my life experience is different to most people and I don't think people should look at a younger person and think that because they may not be as old as them that some how they know more.

As for wisdom, again, isn't this gained for an individual persons experience and the same with knowledge? You can sit in a bus stop and have an old man sat at the side of you who sailed through life, nothing major has happened and then on the other side, you can have a 16 year old girl who has been to hell and back in her short life. Who has more of all the above there?

Is it right to assume that the older a person is, the more they know? Every person who helped me with the loss of my daughter was 30 or below. When I lost John (my previous partner), no one could relate to me but since I have had older women coming to me for advice.

Does this make sense?
EDIT: P.S I am 24 (so not as young as i possibly like to think lol)

 

[smokey]

I dont believe it in every case, I know a hell of alot of older people that are more immature, nieve and reckless then alot of teens.
The main thing I find certainly doesnt come with age in alot of cases is manners, tollerance and respect

 

[smelly07]

What i mean is that as a person gets older they themselves get wiser, have more knowledge and my experience, soley them as individuals.

I do not assume i am wiser etc than someone younger than me nor do i assume someone older than me is wiser etc.


does that make sense......?

for example:
I compare me 10 years ago to me now, i am wiser, have more knowledge and experience.
So as individuals we ALL do the older we get but we cant compare our knowledge/experience/wisdom with others purely on the age. x

 

[angelandbump]

I know what your sayin smelly07 I should have put my question accross better x

 

[JASMAK]

I think so. I think I am alot wiser than I was 10 years ago, for example. I am 37. I wasn't stupid...lol...but, I had some very different views of this world and pretty niave, I guess. Everyday I feel like I learn something and yes, I would definitely say that people gain more knowledge and get wiser, but I also think that some people (not all) can become sort of 'stuck in their ways' a bit too.

 

[Nic1107]

I think it depends on the person. I would hope that most people learn from their experiences and mistakes and become a wiser person as they age, but I've also met more than several people who are well into their middle age or older and haven't seemed to learn a damn thing.

 

[Nibblenic]

Yes, as smelly said as individuals we personally get wiser more knowledgeable and have more experience.
That doesnt mean the above is comparable by age to someone else. As everyone has different lifes, experiences and interests.

 

[Lightworker]

I don't like to agree with it fully. I know for a large majority, the older you get, the more you learn, the wiser you become. However, there is overwhelming evidence that this is not the case for a significant amount of people.

World leaders are all old, and therefore supposed to be the fount of knowledge and wisdom, and yet they keep messing up big style.

In my family, some of the older members continue to do the foolishest things

Some people experience things over and over and don't learn from those experiences so, its not always a given that experience leads to wisdom.

I also think that by saying "the older you are the wiser you are" can have a detrimental impact on the youth as well. There are some young (20s-30s) people with such wise takes on the world, but their voices are not as "big" as the older generations and therefore the world misses out on their wisdom merely because they are young.

 

[PocoHR]

It sounds like you have really been through a lot

But, you shoudn't take too much offense to someone saying that you are young and inexperienced. Maybe she just didn't know or understand your personal story. And who knows the context of her comment? When I hear someone get offended for being called young or inexperienced, I guess it just makes me think they are younger. Again though, I don't know your relationship with this woman or the context in which she said it, so maybe you getting annoyed was totally justified.

But I think we don't only grow from negative or difficult experiences. We also grow from quiet times, boring times, happy times. Its not fair to say that someone is not mature just because they haven't experienced extreme loss. Its also not true that you are all done growing just because you have been through some very awful things.

I think there is no real subsitute for time, but what time gives us isn't the same for every person. But, there is a certain kind of maturity you only get by having more sunrises and sunsets. To me, its not even about experiences or knowledge, its about attitude. 20 year olds are different from 30 year olds who are different from 40 year olds... etc. They deal with their knowledge and experiences differently, and that where we get this idea of age being equal with maturity.

 

[indy and lara]

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[Eternal]

Of course as we age we gain experience, and hopefully wisdom, we learn from mistakes, and grow as individuals. So on a personal level, comparing me at 20 and me at 28, I am much wiser.

However that doesn't mean to say that someone older than you is wiser. We all have different life experiences, even in my late teen I considered myself to have a far amount of life experience compared to my peers, we all have different experiences and all mature at different levels and at different times.

Age does not donate intelligence, experience or wisdom, but the longer we live the more opportunities we have to increase those.

But yes I know what your saying and its really annoying, when I was nursing sometimes you would get patients who asked for an older member of staff to do a procedure and would often point one out that they felt was better able to do the task than I, I guess I look a lot younger than I am, the other day someone told me she thought I was in my late teens lol ... Im 28! But the nursing thing was always funny, half the time they would pick out a student, usually a first year, who had never done that procedure before or maybe never seen it but I guess people expect age = experience.

I would love to meet my younger self and give her a bit of advise, however, I doubt I would be the person I am without my mistakes and flaws.

 

[Sarahkka]

It sounds like you have really been through a lot

But, you shoudn't take too much offense to someone saying that you are young and inexperienced. Maybe she just didn't know or understand your personal story. And who knows the context of her comment? When I hear someone get offended for being called young or inexperienced, I guess it just makes me think they are younger. Again though, I don't know your relationship with this woman or the context in which she said it, so maybe you getting annoyed was totally justified.

But I think we don't only grow from negative or difficult experiences. We also grow from quiet times, boring times, happy times. Its not fair to say that someone is not mature just because they haven't experienced extreme loss. Its also not true that you are all done growing just because you have been through some very awful things.

I think there is no real subsitute for time, but what time gives us isn't the same for every person. But, there is a certain kind of maturity you only get by having more sunrises and sunsets. To me, its not even about experiences or knowledge, its about attitude. 20 year olds are different from 30 year olds who are different from 40 year olds... etc. They deal with their knowledge and experiences differently, and that where we get this idea of age being equal with maturity.

Very well said!

 

[tummymummy]

I dont think wisdom necessarily come with age as i know quite a few people who are quite a bit older than me who make foolish mistakes repeatedly and fail to perceive the outcome of there actions. But i do think knowledge increases with age as surely the longer people are alive the more they learn/know about lots of things they just may not use their knowledge to make wise choices.