“A picture is worth a thousand words.”

“Nothing ventured, nothing gained.”

“There is nothing new under the sun.”

“If you try to please everyone, you end up pleasing no one.”

I still remember rolling my eyes at the “killjoy” graying elders who would use these OLD sayings in attempt to color and control my youth.

There was a veritable plethora of these “weighty wisdom” snippets to guide our growing up and adventures into adulthood. I’ll bet, if you put your mind to it, you can come up with one or three or four of the ones that your parents bombarded you with as well. Did any of us pay attention to these sayings of sagacity? Did we even really understand what the heck the old folks and fogies were actually talking about? Probably not.

I do believe these sayings are truly wasted on the young. That’s because the young have not yet experienced enough of the “hard knocks” of life to realize the true depth and simplicity of these wonderful behavior-guiding bon mots.

Let’s take a look at one or two of these sayings from a “we were there” and a “now we’re here” point of view.

“There is nothing new under the sun.” This axiom made no sense when I was coming up in the 1960s. Of course there was always new stuff like six- or (better yet!) nine-transistor radios, the Beatles’ newest album and eight-track tapes. There was the newest dance step to be learned and the dabbling in marijuana and bottles of beer. What college had the best campus and where was the best rock concert taking place? By gosh and by golly, everything seemed new and exciting.

Now, as we view our present in the light of our days past, this statement is so clear and clean and so elegantly true. The “stuff” of life is not important. It is in the essence of life that value lies; and there is no “new and improved” version of the human condition. Our oh-so-very-deep need for love and acceptance and the angst and joy that come with it are at the core of this thing we call life. This gut-level need, the give-and-take, has been going on since man first stood, separate and apart, and realized there was a “me” and a “you.” And, that somehow we had to make this journey together.

“A picture is worth a thousand words.” I believe this one rang true in a “yeah, that makes sense” sort of way. After all, wasn’t a movie scene a lot easier to take in than reading an entire chapter of “Pride and Prejudice?” The cut-the-glib-gab essence of this saying was entirely lost on me, though, as we enthusiastically mouthed and sang the “flower child” chants of the 1960s and 1970s; created a ruckus and then quite simply dropped the ball.

After having lived a number of decades, most of us now know that results beat a tirade of “to do’s” and “I will’s” any day. We have learned that quiet effort and solid “foot-in-front” marching, and the getting up again and again, is truly the “proof in the pudding.” I think Nike might have actually distilled this saying into a “texting” version for our times with their “Just do it!”

Now we are the graying elders yearning to pass these “wise old sayings” on to the “young pups” in our lives. We seasoned-seniors know only too well that these annoying bits of wisdom are so very true; and we share them in the hope of easing the way and saving pain in the lives of those we love. But, “you cannot put an old head on young shoulders,” so the learning and the pain must come before the wisdom and realization. Such is quite simply life.

The fun part, though, is we get to watch our children try to pass on these very same bits of wisdom to their own children.

Hey, was that a rolling of the eyeballs I caught there?

Tags: adulthood, aging, fogies, korth, old folks, robin korth, weighty wisdom

This entry was posted on Thursday, August 19th, 2010 at 9:20 am and is filed under IOA Stories, Newsletter, Robin's Insights. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.