How Can We Be Older But Not Wiser?

Lately, it takes me 2 tries to get off the sofa. I’m assuming in the years that
follow, the number will only go higher. It seems like a sick cosmic joke to me. It smashes my heart to smithereens. The world must be conspiring against me. I acknowledge that life isn’t all sunshine, lollipops and rainbows. But at the same time, I realise that it takes a concerted effort and sometimes-awkward attempt out of my comfort zone to try to make things happen now.

In a petty way, I put the blame on the education system.

When we’re in school, we are taught to focus on the test. If it is not on the test, don’t bother. We prioritise our time and effort on tests, because that is how we get what we want — many As and hopefully a worthy degree. The cost of being wrong in a test-based learning context is so high that it deters us from taking on new challenges.

Make sure we do it perfectly the first time.

There are better things to do than to lose ourselves in the maybes, the mights and the possibles. Yet when we’re at work, grades don’t exist and the only way we actually learn is by taking on new challenges. We are constantly encouraged to explore and experience the maybes, the mights and the possibles, but we have been hardwired over the last 2 decades not to try. Once in a while, we try.

Chances are, we failed.

We failed once. Twice. Maybe thrice, and we start to maintain a grey cloud and a sullen outlook. The event is long over, but the story remains. We are constantly probing that same spot, over and over, examining it from all angles, again and again, in order to keep the story fresh. Failing is a major issue, but it does not define us as permanent failures. As grown-ups, we are tired of the feeling that accompanies growth and learning. The feeling of incompetence. The journey is difficult not because the skill is hard to acquire, but it comes together with making us feel incompetent in many ways.

The crux is we are not willing to experience incompetency over long-term growth.

In response, we start being angry at young people. We start being angry at those who wear a hat with a little propeller on it and denounce that their growing 500,000 active fan base on social media are bought. We start to dive deep into the condescension of the present toward the past: the presumption that we, by virtue of our birthdays, are more empathetic, practical and courageous than those incomprehensibly young kids who came before us.

We, the once young radicals of today, through no fault of our own, get to see ourselves (slowly, but not quite really) become tomorrow’s irrelevant old fogeys.

Every generation shapes and defines itself of its own struggle, and so inevitably marries the things it oppose. Like how I put the blame on the education system, I believe we put the blame on the past generation. We regard the last with contempt, and the next with incomprehension. 2 tries or not — I’m getting off the sofa. Some of us are not even getting off the sofa at all. We’re too afraid to face the incompetency of needing 2 tries, much more to say to improve to leaping out of our comfort zone. It is not often I say this, but I left the sofa a better man than when I sat on it.