As I more firmly plant my feet in middle age, I look upon the shards of many destroyed illusions which litter the ground around me. One of the narratives which so many societies cherish as to make it a human universal is that wisdom comes with age. We, or at least many generations of us, were brought up to believe that life experience itself makes for wisdom; more years of experience means more wisdom. But this story is just one of many ways we try to inject purpose into events which are basically outside of our control. In this case, we try to find meaning in the brute fact of aging. Aging is often painful, almost always confusing, and leads inexorably toward death — if we are fortunate enough not to die early of disease or injury. Telling ourselves that this process inevitably garners insight helps us to face down what we know we’ll all have to experience. But I seem to have learned early on that this is a big lie.
I grew up around old people. Not exclusively, of course, but I grew up in the same area in which my mother and her parents before her and her grandparents, and so on, also grew up, went to school, dropped out of school, joined the military, got jobs, got married, got divorced, experienced deep traumas, and still basically have their roots dug into the soil. I watched a lot of relatives go from middle age or elderly to old to dead during my school years. I was lucky enough to know some of my great-grandparents and to still have pleasant memories of great aunts and great uncles.
A few of them had some wisdom to share, but I couldn’t describe any of them as “wise”. The same goes for my grandparents when they eventually got to that age. If anything, some of them became less insightful — especially as they began to socially and intellectually isolate and consumed only media which made them angry and afraid. Many of the elders in my life have had a lot of stories and information to share, and that has value, but these do not translate perfectly and seamlessly into deep and special understanding. And the more anyone remarks, “Because I said so,” or “Because I’m older than you,” the less I’m able to trust their judgment on anything else.
The discipline of Jyotish, otherwise “Vedic astrology”, has it that the planet Jupiter rules over our 16th year. In Sanskrit, Jupiter is known as Guru. Among other things, this means that for the year starting at our 15th birthday, we are forming the system of values which we will carry with us for the rest of this particular lifetime. If Jupiter is strong and healthy in our natal chart, even if this year does not go well for us in any number of ways, we will still develop a strong and reliable, but not rigid, approach to morality and, depending on other natal factors, spirituality. If natal Jupiter is poorly placed, suffering under a bad aspect, or is otherwise weak or unhealthy, we will develop a value structure which does not serve us, does not serve the general good, or both. While life experience may help us to hone this basic material, it won’t give it to us just by living for a long time.
Another lesson I learn as I age is that, truly, I am at my best when I am looking back at my 15- and 16-year old self and ask, “What does he find to be inspiring?” I don’t mean, of course, that I do, or ought to do, everything adolescent me would have done; that’s not the lesson. I was not especially well-behaved, and usually did not embody my own ideals well. But when I let myself inhabit the kernels of love and enthusiasm of that boy and see in which direction they tend to point, I am far better able not only to find the joy in life but also to determine how to respond to its difficulties.
Wisdom, then, comes not from mere age, nor even the aggregate of life experience, but from the interaction of experience with a youthful mind. Cynics and pessimists don’t usually become so in a vacuum; for them, the weight of experience has overcome their ideals, leaving despair and fear to dominate the field of their lives. Incidentally, this usually indicates a poor aspect on Jupiter, often from Saturn, though a particularly helpful Saturn placement can actually make one better able to recover from despair and fear. Such a badly influenced Jupiter leaves one’s character ill equipped to deal with slings and arrows, and, lacking Saturn’s more positive traits, the genuine equilibrium necessary to rebound from them.
For as much as I try to keep myself grounded and aware of the goings-on of the world, I keep finding out just how naïve I really am. It has caused me a lot of trouble in life — trusting the wrong people, or trusting good but flawed people with the wrong things, seeing the best in people even when reason says that I should not. Part of this is attributable to autism, which comes with the feature of having difficulty understanding ulterior motives and unspoken intentions, but this all may well have much to do with various natal placements (with which I won’t bore you in this already long-ish post) which say, in effect, that this is just who I am. Also with age, I am coming more and more to appreciate this naïveté in myself. It means that no matter how low I get, I will come back. I am not constituted such as to become hard-hearted, even if I am often hard-headed.
My perennial callowness, I believe, also provides me the insight that, like it or not, we are all basically children in the Cosmos. I treat my Siva not as a feudal lord but as a playmate who understands my troubles. And He obliges, responding in kind with divine sympathy and unfading playfulness. Our pretensions to wisdom only get in the way of the fullness of experience.
Of course, I’m certain that 15-year-old me would have scoffed at that.