Optimism Thought of the Week

For Sunday, December 06, 2015

In Search of Wisdom

By Glennel Hardy

If there is one particular age demographic that if anyone ask me, who do I connect with the most, my reply would be the young at heart, our seniors.  I was raised in a generation in which my most meaningful conversations were not with my peers, but it was with the elderly.  Some of the younger generation does not seize on the opportunity of the untapped potential of wisdom that exists in the inner core of what our seniors bring to the table.

Of course today we have the smartphones, we have our apps, but most of these tools are only as smart as the user that utilizes them. If you’re not tech-savvy then your smartphone and all it can do, is under-utilized and it becomes useless. Taking this just a step further, what if our elders were just as powerful as our smartphones today.  What information can they offer, or what can they tell us that we are missing out on?

While I was out running errands Saturday morning, on my very last chore I decided to hit the car wash, to give Alexis a good scrub down.  As I was hand-drying my car off at the end of the cycle a guy by the name of Daniel approached me.  Daniel asked if I can help him by offering him a couple of dollars to grab something to eat, and so I did.  Once I provided Daniel with the two dollars, he in return educated me on something that I never knew.  He went on to describe the specifications of my car, the engine, and what the manufacturer normally would set the governor to on the engine.  Daniel offered me some wisdom in exchange for what I had offered him.

The moral of the story is we should consistently search for wisdom, everyone has something to give, but we have to be willing to come in empty, and also be willing to be taught, so we can leave out full.