Tag: sharing

Wisdom

“If youth is wasted on the young, then wisdom is wasted on the old.”
–George Bernard Shaw

I agree that youth is wasted on the young. They don’t know what they don’t know. But I have to question the second part of this otherwise brilliant quote.
How is wisdom wasted on the old? Most older people can’t wait to share their experiences and for the most part, are ok enough with their past to effectively share what happened, why and the end result. My theory is that it can only be wasted on the old if
a)they care not to share it, or
b) nobody wants to hear it.
I know when my dad tried to share it, I mostly brushed it off. I didn’t want to hear it. Of course, now I find myself talking to his stone, telling him how right he was about everything. His wisdom was not wasted on me, it just had a tape delay.

I like to think I have some wisdom to share with anyone who wants to listen. My wisdom stems from a wide variety of fuck-ups in my life. My scars, of which I have plenty, all have a tale to tell. Even the ones that you can’t see. I am a walking cautionary tale. But it’s a tale I will gladly tell. But someone needs to solicit it because I am not one to offer up anything unless requested. Maybe that is how it is wasted, young people who tend to “know everything” are unlikely to ask therefore the available resource of wisdom is untapped and therefore wasted.

We have a world of information contained in a single cell phone, yet we live in the most uninformed and uneducated era in recorded history. Similarly, the older amongst us contain a veritable treasure chest of knowledge about how things happen, why, and how to prevent them. But unless asked for, it will die off.

If my experiences can help just one person avoid a life-altering mistake, then all of my scars will have been worthwhile. Not wasted.

3,2,1…Hope

I have again been invited to participate in a quote challenge. My participation in such challenges is spotty at best but I want to introduce you to Lisa @ All About Life. She has a great blog. She’s very positive in her posts, interesting, a loyal follower, great commenter and a all-around cool chick. If you read her, you will want to follow her. Thank you Lisa for the challenge.

Today’s topic is Hope. A perfect topic for me to discuss. My entire life centers around it. I walk this earth with the belief that things are one way or the other. I have been called “Black and White” many times in my life and it wasn’t a compliment. I never backed down from it. I believe in absolutes, especially in matters of attitude. One thing that has always sustained me, that has drawn the respect and admiration of my peers, is my optimism.

When you are chronically ill you really have only 2 choices in how you approach life. Negative or positive. You either dwell on your situation and ask “why me”? or you deal with it by getting through the hard days, rejoicing in the good days and always, always look forward to the time when you will feel better every day. Even if that day never comes…live life as if it will.

I can think of no better way to discuss hope than to showcase my favorite movie, The Shawshank Redemption. If you haven’t seen it, the nuts and bolts of it is a innocent man sentenced to life in a brutal prison. Can you imagine being innocent, jailed for life and screaming with all of your being that you don’t belong there? How long must a day be, what motivates you to get up and live with that crushing weight on you?

To start things off, the best quote of the movie is
Quote # 1

Andy Dufesne

Doesn’t this say it all? While it doesn’t explicitly have the word hope in it, it is the true essence of hope itself. This is my philosophy in a nutshell. Negative vs positive, backwards vs forward. Optimism, hope itself is a choice. The choice you make will determine your path and how others perceive you. I choose to get busy living because, even if I was in prison, I would always believe that I would be vindicated eventually. The truth always reveals itself and I would want to be there when it does. I choose to get busy living.

“Red”


This is the flip side of hope. When you look at your situation and determine that it is indeed going to define you and therefore hope is fruitless. In this case Red has resigned himself to being institutionalized for life. The walls he used to challenge had begun to give him security. The idea of a life outside of those walls became a fantasy, one that became dangerous. It challenged his reality. My only challenge to this, and again I have never been faced with such circumstances, is that one never knows the future. If you aren’t open to the possibility that tomorrow may hold a surprise then you reduce the likelihood of it happening. In this case, Red was paroled and he was suddenly faced with a whole new set of “hopes”. Ones that were once impossibilities became his new reality.

“Hope springs eternal” is a popular saying. There is a caveat…you need to be open to it. Choose hope. Don’t complain. Noone needs to hear it, it accomplishes nothing, and at the end of the day that may be how you are remembered. 

You don’t want that.

I’m not going to nominate anyone, but feel free to play along. I’d love to see what you come up with.