Learning to receive wisdom
Over the last few months I’ve started realizing that my parents have in fact turned out to be right about many things (e.g., scratching a mosquito bite just makes it itchier; drinking hot water is better for you). Anthony says this is a sign of my prefrontal cortex developing. Interesting theory.
I’m starting to think that as people go through life, they internalize all these “earned lessons” through trial-and-error, and they want to tell them to their kids/students/proteges/the misguided youth to save them the trial. This is exactly what my parents have said: “We’ve already gone through this so we’re just trying to save you the trouble. Don’t scratch your mosquito bites!” Unfortunately, my response for much of my life has been, “I don’t believe you, just because that’s what you learned doesn’t mean it’ll happen for me!”
By this point, I’ve realized that probably everything that will ever happen to me has happened to someone else. So fortunately, the things that people have already learned will, in fact, happen for me. All this is to say that I’m ready to receive wisdom from people older and more experienced than me.
Along this line, I want to make more intergenerational friends. I always thought something a bit strange about college is that you mostly only hang out with people your age plus minus two years. You go from hanging out with wise people every day (parents) to seeing them maybe two hours a week at the front of a crowded lecture hall (professors). So that’s one of my personal goals. Knowledge transfer is the real wealth transfer. If any of you have wisdom you’d like to transfer to me, please let me know.