“The Gift of Time and Age”(Wiser Next Week: On Aging & Death)

About the Wiser Next Week Series: These entries will involve posting my book, Wiser Next Week, chapter by chapter, freely available to the public. Additionally, I’ll be recounting a story about something I’ve learned based on the chapter’s topic since the months that have past when the book was published in December 2018.

Disclaimer: I must make a disclaimer before the start of this one. Me being a young person, I’ve never had to deal with any serious health issues. I’ll scrounge up a story though and try my best to make it relatable.

Don’t Look Back

Right now, more then 2 and a half years, I sometimes think back to my college years and wish I did some things different. Not the lack of partying or other social activities which I am indifferent to, but the pace & intensity in which I went after the course work.

I often think to myself that finishing undergraduate studies in the 7 semesters it took was not fast enough. If I could go back I would finish it in 5 and get an even earlier jump start in my life. This though is hindsight bias not regret as 18 year old me did not have the capacity to think the way I can right now at 24.

Focusing on hindsight is unhealthy, I already went at schooling hard. I finished undergrad in 3.5 years and worried my mother because she thought I was overburdening myself.

The Price to Be Paid

My manner of thinking here is a fallacy, as it is not what you get that leads to the greatest sense of accomplishment. It is the distance traversed that leads to a feeling that, “I did something that made a difference.” This fulfillment feeling merits its own article for a later date. The point is, what is the most valuable resource you need to get to that mountaintop you’re striving for?

Time.

And what is a byproduct of time?

Age.

That’s the price to be paid to get what you want. Age is the currency used to acquire more:

Power & Prestige
Knowledge & Experience
Respect & Admiration

The Harvard Medical School put out a study about aging worth checking out.

Karl Pillemer in 30 Lessons for Living Puts it this way:

Put age in perspective, that every milestone we reach is accompanied by new opportunities that weren’t available previously, whether it be an age barrier or the acquisition of knowledge and life experiences previously
lacking.

I realize now that I can do things now that I couldn’t 6 years ago. From speaking in front of crowds, convincing people to go along with what I want, to being dropped in a foreign city across various continents by myself and having the street smarts to figure it out.

Six years is just a blip of time in the macro sense, but what I’ve gained since then allows me to reach higher and higher in what Stephen Covey calls the Upward Spiral. So don’t you want to:

Gain a social position that grants you the authority to reflect your perception of reality into your outward environment?
Have the mileage to know things others don’t, and as a result them valuing what you have to say?
Have memorable achievements that lead to people looking up to you?

Time and age grants you this. And as you cannot take the bad without the good, accept the bad so you can capitalize on the good.