Too Adult

In today’s world, age is often associated with wisdom. It is said that the older you get, the wiser you become. This idea is a result of a combination of factors:

Many people in this world have led very different lives, and thus accumulated a great deal of knowledge about how to live life well. These people would be wise in their own right regardless of their age. Thus, age has nothing to do with wisdom; it is merely one factor that contributes to an individual’s level of intelligence. Wisdom itself cannot be measured since at least part of what makes someone wise comes from within themselves; something that no one else can really know or understand fully unless they experience it themselves first-hand (e.g., heartbreak).

Sometimes, people can be extremely intelligent in one aspect of their lives (e.g., math), yet could lack even basic common sense in another (e.g., when it comes to relationships). That’s not to say that they’re completely stupid; it just means that they have different strengths and weaknesses. Individuals who are strong in practical life skills may have no interest in academics or theoretical concepts, while those who excel academically may never have learned how to cook a meal or do laundry. Ideally, someone should strive for an understanding of both worlds, using the strengths obtained from each ancient wisdom medieval knowledge to complement the other. This is what helps define wisdom as being composed of more than just academic intelligence. There are certain things that older people know that younger ones don’t.

1) Older individuals have had more time to get accustomed to the world around them. They’ve been able to see how things work and can use that knowledge to their advantage in a way that is different from beginners who are just starting. For example, someone who has been driving for 20 years knows all of the roads surrounding their town and knows which routes will take them where they want to go most efficiently compared with a new driver, who would need a GPS or some other external resource helping them find the way. This isn’t true for absolutely everyone, but it’s true enough of the time, especially when you compare an old person at retirement age with a child just entering primary school.

The reason for this is that we learn and grow as we go through life. Even as children, we understand the way things work (to a point), and as we grow older, our knowledge of how things work gets better and better until it’s truly remarkable. Beginners might be able to learn relatively quickly because they haven’t yet developed bad habits or inefficient ways of doing things – those will come after years and years of not knowing any better.

Age has nothing to do with wisdom. If you’re young, you might lack experience but just having lived doesn’t automatically lead to understanding or insight into concepts that other people can detect immediately upon hearing about them for the first time. Does an old person know more than a younger person? The answer is no. Wisdom doesn’t develop in a linear fashion with time, instead, it varies from person to person and may even fluctuate within the same individual over time.

I’d like you to take a little quiz that will test your ability to see things for what they are. Read through this list of people’s names and pay attention very closely:

Seth Mac Farlane Neil DeGrasse Tyson Mark Zuckerburg Sergey Brin Steve Jobs Mickey Rooney Richard Nixon Larry King Drew Carey Penn Jillette Maya Angelou Ursula K Le Guin Hugh Heffner Jerry Seinfeld Ted Williams Martin Luther King Jr John Lennon Charles Darwin Becca Schuhmacher Samuel L Jackson Robert Downey Jr George Carlin Upton Sinclair Jimmy Carter

You probably identified the first person on the list as being among the youngest, while thinking of an older individual for each subsequent name. But I’d like to make a little confession- every single one of those names is listed incorrectly on this quiz. Each belongs in either the first or last position. Can you guess which ones are out of place?

Take your time with this – it’s not a race!

Here are their true ages:

Seth Mac Farlane 42 Neil DeGrasse Tyson 67 Mark Zuckerburg 31 Sergey Brin 44 Steve Jobs 56 Mickey Rooney 93 Richard Nixon 37 Larry King 80 Drew Carey 51 Penn Jillette 51 Maya Angelou 86 Ursula K Le Guin 85 Hugh Heffner 89 Bob Dylan 75 Madonna 58

I hope that this quiz not only taught you a little bit about some celebrities but also made you think about how your assumptions about people’s chronological age correlate with their life experiences. This concept is one of many addressed in a book called “The Wisdom Paradox” by Elkhonon Goldberg. In the book, Goldberg discusses how studying “brainy individuals” can help us learn more about aging and wisdom both separately and together.

For those who don’t know, wisdom has to do with the judgment that comes from experience, whereas intelligence just describes how good someone is at solving puzzles. No offense to Mark Zuckerburg- he may be very smart (and young), but I’m talking about wisdom here!