I was recently asked by a student how long it took to prepare my lecture, I replied about 35 years.
Most people can go to college and read books, study to remember names and dates, facts and details.
You don’t need age to teach facts and age is no guarantee of wisdom however
Age brings experience – and from that, if we choose, can come wisdom.
You can learn about grief but only when you lose someone close to you do you learn about grief.
You can learn how to be a good parent but only when that helpless bundle is placed into your arms do you learn to be a parent.
You can learn about forgiveness, but only when you choose to forgive those who have hurt you the most do you learn about forgiveness.
These and a myriad of other lessons you can learn from the pages of a book, be prepared for by your teacher but you only truly learn when it happens to you.
Bravery, heroism, self-denial, selfless generosity are acts of will not acquired knowledge.
The only way to build up a deposit of Love is to love now. The more you spend the greater your balance.
As the years pass, if we are willing, our lives become full of something we call experience and there is no short cut to experience. It is full of things called failures and regrets, success and pride, hopes and remorse. Joy and sorrow, gain and loss.
Once, I was young and full of ideology, things were clear, the bad guys wore black.
Now I am full of ideology and things are still clear but now I see the hurt and the past in the man in black. I see the road he travelled down and the path he took and I wonder … what if …..