Hi my darlings! Its been a while you would say 🙂 a typical Nigerian saying struck me and so I decided to share my thoughts with *y’all* (as usual). 🙂
“What an elder sees while sitting, a child can’t see while standing!” *arrrrghhhh!* I must confess whenever I hear that, I just *cringe*. Not like I have been told that, but I hear it from relatives, family friends, random *peeps* or *Naija movies* *LOL!* . The amusing thing is, the people that say this the most aren’t so old *oh!* *LOL!* the elderly ones ( I mean the mamas and papas) don’t even stress on it. Any ways back to the point. My question is -is being old aged/ experienced / grey haired, make you wise(r)?
My definition of the word “wisdom” – is the deep understanding of things, people, the environment, events/ situations and all other forms of life in which the individual’s perception of these, would result in a good judgement/ solution/ advice. In which the dictionaries and wikipedia ( yes the wikipedia!) agree with my definition. So, are all our elderly wise? Simply because they are much older, experienced, or better still grey haired *LOL!*. *Aaaaaaaaaa* I don’t think so! because, with love, they have given us stories about how they must have experienced a certain event which most times didn’t turn out pretty well, and so “with love” they give us advices on how to go about the situation. NOW PAUSE!!! ….
(1) How many times did these story(ies) help?
(2) How many times did their advice(s) work for your good?
(3) How many times did their advice(s) turn out sour for you?
If positive? Good for you. If negative? Oh well, life must go on. But in the end they/he/ she wasn’t so wise after all.
I feel wisdom can be attained at any age. (Obviously not from the babies, toddlers e.t.c) *LOL!* but we can learn from anybody at any thing. Its a funny but sad notion that parents have, that they know it all and kids don’t because of their age range and so they never voice out the little information they know. This notion is so so wrong and should be thrown back to the stone age. I feel kids these days are way smarter and learn so fast. And with proper guidance from their parents, wards, siblings, relatives or any elderly, who knows – we might just learn something new and interesting.
I might be wrong, but I also feel wisdom is a gift (blessing). It can’t be bought or earned. In other words not everybody can or would posses this gift. Don’t mean to go all biblical now, (please pardon me, my non christian readers) but king Solomon wasn’t all grey for him to exhibit his wisdom 🙂
Receiving an advice from an elderly is a lovely thing because most people never had that opportunity to be informed. But at the same time when advised, do think properly and seek the guidance from YOUR MAKER and things would be just fine. *hugs*
Lots of love
ashh♣♠
Chichiashh's randomz... 
Nice blog. Wat do u say u use pictures or animations on ur blog to spice it up. 🙂
Thanks dear, I would definitely do something about it. Xx
While you are right that being old does not really mean being wise it is still very important to understand that certain wisdom comes with age no matter the level of sophistication there are some things that in most cases will be difficult for a someone in their twenties to fully appreciate. A small example will be explaining to a youngster a dangers of of keeping late nights or the vagaries of marriage or the far reaching concequences of certain political decisions. Even though our generation seems to have developed a lot faster than our parents I still believe that the older we get the more we tend to start appreciating the essence of life and “the big picture”. Hence the statement what an old person sees sitting a youngster will not see even when he is at the top of an Iroko tree but hey that’s just my opinion
Well said! And *LOL!* “at iroko tree”. Thanks for your contribution. Xx