29th May 2025
“The best classroom in the world is at the feet of an elderly person.”
John Leland from the New York Times published an article in late 2015, titled “The Wisdom of the Aged”, depicting life experiences of six people age 85 & older, whose lives were followed throughout the year and yielded a treasure trove of new perspectives on living and fulfilling our lives.
The question on the secret to long lives can teach us a big lesson on forgiveness, integrity, gratitude, curiosity, unselfishness and inner growth. Elderly people hold a lot of information the younger can use to enrich their lives.
Ancient Romans had a lot faith in their wisdom & experience, quoting Cicero: “For there is assuredly nothing dearer to a man than wisdom, and though age takes away all else, it undoubtedly brings us that.“
Shall like to illustrate with a parable.
A young king was facing shortage of food in his kingdom. At the advice of his young ministers, they decided to kill all the old men & women in the kingdom.
The king passed the orders, “Just kill all the oldies. The number of mouths to feed shall become considerably less & the food shall become sufficient for all.”
So the king’s men scanned the entire Kingdom & killed all the oldies i.e. all the people who were above 65 years.
But, there was a young fellow who loved & revered his father a lot.
So, before the king’s men came, he hid his father in a large vessel containing wheat & secretly looked after his father.
All the other oldies were killed & with them were lost their wisdom, experience & good sense.
The following year, there were no rains & the famine worsened. Now even the youngsters & children started dying of hunger for there was no food to eat.
When it was time to sow the crops, there were no seeds in the stores, because everything had been eaten away.
The kingdom was deep in despair.
The young fellow, who had secretly saved his father, discussed the problem with him. The father said, “Till the soil on all the road sides.”
The young fellow got a group of friends together & they ploughed the road sides. Soon, there were tiny sprouts along the road sides. The saplings were transferred to the fields & they had a reasonably good crop.
This was reported to the king who questioned the man. He wanted to know how this had happened.
The young man said, “I had secretly saved my father against your orders. Perhaps it is because of his blessings.”
The old man was brought before the king & questioned. He said simply, “Every year the farmers carry their grains in carts to the marketplace for sale. Some fall out of the carts and get deposited by the road side. If the land is ploughed the seeds get air & water, so they sprout!”
The king was overjoyed at this simple revelation.
Isn’t it true that we tend to write off our parents and elders by saying, “You don’t know anything Dad; times have changed.”
Yes, times have changed, but these ‘oldies’ still know more than we do, because they carry with them the wealth of experience.
Knowledge can be acquired through reading, but wisdom is acquired only through practice & experience.
It is said that every young man tells his father at some time or the other, “Dad, you are wrong!” But by the time he realizes that his father was right, his own child is old enough to tell him, “Dad, you are wrong!”
Dad, you were never wrong!
Shall always miss your wisdom.
Learn from the wisdom of the Elders & stay blessed forever.