The wisdom of the old...

Must it be wasted on the young?

I’ve never been much for mourning or thinking about the past, but whenever I listen to this song, an OST to a Korean drama I watched while a much younger version of myself, I think of my grandfather who passed away suddenly¹ in 2017.

It’s a strange association. I used to watch movies with my grandparents all the time as a child, but never Korean dramas. And I don’t think I would have been thinking of my grandpa (then alive) while watching this drama about a Korean King and his great love. But for some reason it’s this particular song that always brings him to the forefront of my mind.

My only regret

On top of not being much for mourning or ruminating about the past, I’m also not one for regret. I’d like to see it as a sign of me living fully in the present and being at peace with the choices I’ve made in my life. But you could equally argue it’s a sign of a narcissistic belief that I’m infallible, that all my past decisions in life have been the “right” ones.

Who’s to say which is the more accurate interpretation? Reality probably lies somewhere in between, in what a writer friend calls the messy middle where life truly happens.

But I do have one regret in life, and it’s not that I didn’t spend more time with my grandparents while they were still alive. (My grandma has also passed, several years before my grandfather.)

I spent a lot of time with my grandparents as a child. Each Saturday, they’d come pick me up from my piano lesson, take me to lunch, then we’d watch a movie together, either at my home or in the cinema. Each Saturday, we spent hours together, the three of us.

No, the regret isn’t that I didn’t spend enough time with them. It’s how I used that time. All those hours spent with my grandparents—both a deep well brimming with life wisdom—and not once did I ask them about their lives, about who they were before they became “grandpa” and “grandma.”

Throughout all those years, I was too foolish and absorbed in my own young life² to realise that sitting next to me, half-dozing to the movie I’d enthusiastically picked (because I liked it and obviously they must like it too), were the two greatest life coaches I could ever ask for. And not only could I have had access to their life advice for free, I probably would have made them much happier had I shown even a tiny bit more interest in their lives.

The wasted youth

It’s a sad irony. As children, we have so much free time and so many opportunities to learn from the wisdom of our older relatives—the grandparents who had all the time in the world for us, the parents who were with us pretty much 24/7, the uncles and aunts we visited, those distant relatives we saw at weddings.

These are people from all walks of life who have decades, decades of experience we could learn from—the kind of experience you often have to pay for to get access to as an adult—and who would undoubtedly have relished the opportunity to answer any questions we asked.

But how many of us, as children, took advantage of those opportunities? How many of us grilled them with questions about how they progressed in their career, how they navigated the relationships in their lives, what investments they made, and oh, where was the best roast duck in town.

More likely than not, we would have found their stories (which we didn’t ask to hear) interminably boring and not really appreciated the life advice they gave (we didn’t ask for it!).

At least, that was me. It wasn’t until I was in my late 20s, after I’ve had my breakdown and identity crisis, that I began to realise how valuable this life advice was, how packed with useful insights the life stories were. And by that point, my grandma was long gone and (unbeknownst to me) I only had a few years left with my grandpa.

It was at the height of my mania in 2014 that I first realised how much I could learn from him. But then I spent the next three years distracted by the recovery of my “self” post-breakdown. I would never again go visit him just for a chat like I was doing when I snapped this photo of us, hence the regret.

What do you think?

I’ve spoken with a friend before about this topic and he echoed my sentiments that the wisdom of the old is sadly wasted on the young, that as children, we’re too self-absorbed to realise what we’re missing out on.

But, as always, I’d also like to hear what you think:

Is the wisdom of the old wasted on the young?

Do you wish you could have learnt more from your grandparents? Or did you find their advice anachronistic and irrelevant? Are you somewhere in the messy middle? What can we do about all this? Am I asking too many questions?

Send a reply, leave a comment, share this with someone whose wisdom you’d like to hear…

Until next Friday… Stay thoughtful,

Val

p.s. This post was a reader’s request that happened to gel well with an idea I’d had brewing in the back of my mind for some time. If there’s a topic you’d like me to stop and think about, simply reply to this email or leave a comment and I’ll consider it for a Val Thinks post.

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Photo by Ravi Patel on Unsplash

1. He was fine one day, and a week later he was gone due to several complications following a seemingly innocuous stomach infection. It took us all by surprise.

2. How youth is wasted on the young…