Assets of experience

When we reach a certain age life takes on a different perspective. What used to be normal suddenly becomes the oddity. What used to be funny becomes tired and childish. There are many examples of this but until one reach’s that stage it is impossible to comprehend. I guess this is what they call the generation gap. Movies, music and even dancing all takes on a different meaning. I spent years in the music business working with some of the top rockers in the 70’s, now any kind of loud music drives me right up a wall. I used to roughhouse and wrestle with my boys, now when they come over and start roughhousing with their small sons or daughters it makes me nervous and agitated. I guess when you get older you see things differently. When I was in the service I could wake out of a dead sleep and be ready for anything at a moments notice, now it takes me 5 minutes to walk urgently from the bed to the bathroom. At least two minutes are required just to straighten up enough to walk. The one thing that has not gone away is the knowledge and experience I have gained through a lifetime of effort.

I’m telling you this because it may be the difference in how we look at the same problems. You may jump quickly to a theory of how to accomplish something and I may take a few minutes to look back and call on personal experience to decide on how something should be. I’m not saying that your way is always wrong but many times I can remember having done or seen the same thin earlier in my life. Experience is not something to take lightly. We in America have a habit of thinking that only the new way is the right way, and we pass up the chance many times to learn from those who have experienced similar problems. I was asked not long ago that if this is true, why do we send youngsters to fight a war? It was a legitimate question, because it’s true, we do send youngsters to fight a war.

The best way I can explain this is, we take the most experienced troops in the field and make teachers of them. They have to somehow breathe knowledge into these raw recruits, and allow them to become an extension of their own being. Only when a recruit can actually feel that they can see through the eyes of their trainer, and call on the trainers experience as if it were their own, are they ready for combat. The soldier who bluffs his way through training and thinks he has all the answers is not going to survive very long in a firefight. The worse part is they may get others injured or killed in the process.

I think it’s safe to say that the military uses experience to teach survival and to prepare their charges for the duties that may be required of them. Yet we Americans as a whole refuse to call on the experience of our elders for guidance. A great example of this is the mandatory retirement of airline pilots, at 60 years old. It doesn’t matter that they have a lifetime of experience to call on, it doesn’t matter that their health is perfect. All that matters is that they must be getting senile because of their age. If I needed a brain surgeon I surely wouldn’t want the one who just graduated, I would rather have the 65 year old that had done this procedure successfully a million times.

In the next few months we will be faced with some of the toughest and most life altering decisions in our history. We can go only with the theory of youth or should we maybe weigh with it the experience of those who have survived previous economic disasters. Experience is an immeasurable asset and yet we waste it so many times by ignoring the lessons learned by those who have traveled the path before us.

And that’s my opinion,
Don