SAGE ADVICE

by Trish LaPlaca of  Spark Your Wisdom

Older… Better… Wiser, right?  Maybe. Well, let me think about it…

There I was, tucked into my easy chair with coffee in hand, blissfully easing into my day. The world-news-in-a-teacup had just ended, and my favorite morning show hosts were moving on into their light, pre-commercial chatter. “Don’t go anywhere,” they warned. “Stay tuned for a very special segment. Expert Jen So-and-so will let us in on the secrets to lasting love. We’ll be right back…”

The commercials floated around me. I got to thinking. How does anyone get to be a “how-to” expert anyway? Who are these seemingly chosen ones, these oh-so clever, so together people holding the keys to life-transformation in seven easy steps?

Then Ms. Jen So-and-so came on. Pretty, well-poised, you know the kind. She and Maggie did a breezy jump into the must-do points to nourishing love. I listened intently.  And then it hit me.

A rapid-fire replay of all the other how-to experts I’d seen on the show came flooding through my mind. The faces were different, but they all had one thing in common. Youth. Every last one a 30-something, sometimes even 20-something (aargh)! year old. They were money experts, dot.com experts, relationship experts. Best-selling novelists, medical specialists, CEO’s.

And 50-something me? Where did I go wrong? If there’s any credo I’ve hung onto all my life, it’s the one about how, through Age and Experience, comes Wisdom. I’ve gladly been putting in my time. It gives me great hope to think that some day I could possess some sage insight worthy of passing on to others. Some day. Like in my golden years.

Obviously, all the Jen So-and-so’s are beating this slow-and-steady tortoise to it. They’re not waiting for age, nor experience, as prerequisites. Nor do they have to. Sharp, savvy, young and beautiful. They rule.

So how, I ask, (and yes, with a bitchy whine), have these young pups earned the right to be “expert” at anything? No, I don’t have my head in the sand. I know young hot actors, models and entertainers dominate the media. But now they get to be the experts too?

Don’t get me wrong. I don’t begrudge anyone success. I, too, was a relatively savvy 30-something. I lived overseas, spoke a second language, earned a Masters degree. An independent professional with a great social life. Later I married, owned a home, even became a school principal.

But were my expectations inherently flawed?  In my mind those years were for growing, learning, rooting myself.  I was a sponge, absorbing everyone else’s knowledge – especially from older, wiser mentors. I wasn’t an expert at anything. And as far as I could see, none of my friends were either. We were becoming – not one of us had arrived.

My forties, I reasoned, would be for “coming into my own”, and that’s what they turned out to be. I had sufficient knowledge,age and experience. Stood more confident in my skin. But did I have “expertise”?

Ironically, my fifties are teaching me who I truly am. For good or bad, I am an “evolver”. Even as I speak I’m back to being an apprentice, taking courses toward a new writing career. Ever the learner, ever the grower.  Will I ever be the knower?

Hey, who knows. Maybe someday that’ll be me sitting in the interview chair, chatting on about some cutting edge expertise I have to share. And with any luck, I too, will have one of those Why-Not-Me, I-Belong-Here attitudes.  But don’t count on it. Who’ll want to take advice from some old lady?

Photo credit: www.nctq.org/docs