There’s a part of growing older nobody can teach you. Most people discover it around the same time they need glasses to read the newspaper. Or when they develop unusually strong opinions about lawn mowers.
That coveted Snapper mower comes with an absurd number of warning labels. Don’t stick your hand underneath it while it’s running. Don’t drink alcohol while operating, etc. Things you’d assume an adult already knows.
And yet, somewhere right now, there’s a man sitting in an Emergency Room. He’s on his fifth beer. He’s carrying two fingers and a thumb in a zip-lock bag. Because sometimes human beings insist on learning things the hard way.
It’s the same with life. The people who love you are constantly trying to save you from yourself. That’s why parents lecture and grandparents often repeat themselves. Because, as Pastor Andy Stanley once said, “the common denominator in all your bad decisions is…you. And we were there for all of them.”
Of course, parents and grandparents aren’t always right. Mine came from the generation that believed that lung darts and Tang were both health products. These are also the people who served us fried SPAM. What exactly is SPAM, anyway?
But underneath the nicotine, Tang, and that mysterious canned meat was an enormous amount of lived wisdom. The older I get, the more I realize old people weren’t trying to get in my way. They were just trying to keep me from doing stupid things.
Things like financing a jet ski at 19% interest or getting my high school girlfriend’s name tattooed on my chest. The problem is that most of us are incapable of applying wisdom until we are carrying our fingers in a zip lock bag.
Because there are certain lessons human beings prefer to learn firsthand. Things like: money can’t buy happiness, experiences matter more than things, relationships determine results, English muffins are neither English nor a muffin, you can be right or happy, pick one and never ignore your gut feelings. There is wisdom in making mistakes. But as the saying goes, there is no wisdom in the second kick of a mule.
It’s amazing how confident we become standing at the edge of mistakes we haven’t made yet. Then life humbles you with a roundhouse kick you never saw coming. Like working too much for too long and suddenly realizing that your children aren’t children anymore. Or marrying the wrong person for fifteen or twenty years.
One morning you catch your reflection in the mirror and wonder where the time went. And somewhere in the middle of ordinary, mundane life, you think: I should’ve known better. Then comes the staggering realization: doggone it, I did know better.
That’s the great irony of life. The older you get, the more you realize that timeless wisdom sounded cliché precisely because it survived generation after generation of human stupidity. Because those that shared the timeless wisdom likely made the same mistakes.
When your grandfather warned you that life moves fast, he wasn’t being philosophical. He was trying to explain that he was your age about fourteen seconds ago and he didn’t think the rules applied to him either. Unfortunately, he knows that there is only one path to hindsight for you.
The great irony is that once we get punched in the pie hole, we instantly see the world differently. The fog clears and we become “wiser”. We begin to act as if we are suddenly smarter than everyone else. Like the addict who makes it through rehab and then starts telling all their friends not to do cocaine.
Never mind that those same friends and family spent years trying to get him off cocaine. And one day, if you’re lucky enough to grow old, you’ll probably catch yourself doing the exact same thing. Not cocaine but repeating timeless warnings to younger people. Watching them sprint toward the proverbial Emergency Room like a dog chasing a squirrel into traffic. They’ll smile politely as they pass by, the same way you once did.
And they won’t listen either, at least until they’re carrying two fingers and a thumb in a Ziplock bag.
I’m curious. What lessons did you have to learn the hard way? Leave me a message by emailing me at the address below. I promise that you’ll hear back from me cause, you know, I’m a real person and all.
Tom Greene is a writer living in Atlanta, Georgia with his wife and loyal wiener dog, Maggie. His writing can be found at www.tomgreene.com. He can be reached at [email protected]
