Sunday, June 17, 2012

The Price of Being Wise

Wisdom comes with age, and it is built with failure. Every time we fail, we feel disheartened but the takeaway is that you get a tad wiser, you learn from your mistakes. Every time you stumble, your judgment becomes better. We pay a heavy price for experience and wisdom, one that cannot be measure monetarily, Life after all is a fair trader, what can’t be paid with money is paid with time.  As you near your thirties there comes this added pressure of sounding wiser, in most cases it is to know when to keep your mouth shut. It is something I am still learning. I am still five years away from it……well actually make it four, but technically its three. The fact is that I hate getting to my thirties, you wake up one morning and realize that you are getting old–not the grey hair and less libido kind where you need to pop a pill to get a hard-on–but that of a more mature kind, you are expected to know about shares, stocks, and mutual fund investments and tax calculations, people ask you about what kind of curtains would suit their bedroom, which school is good for the kids, who should be elected the president, that kind. Questions pertaining to movies and music are directed towards the younger kind, those freshly passed out of college, in their early twenties. Bastards. No one asks for your advice on love. There was a time when a friend would ask you how to woo a woman and you would quote lines which you find after Google searching “Love quotes”, now your friend only wants to know on how to save a relationship, the answer to which even Google is trying to figure out.

You try to fit in with the younger generation but you feel terribly out of place, you are looked upon as a relic, you feel like Gandalf the Grey amidst a bunch of Hobbits who look up to you when wisdom needs to be imparted. They are busy Whatsapping while you are busy wondering “What is that app?”, they listen to heavy metal, while you secretly listen to Kumar Sanu and Anuradha Paudwal, only to realize that it has left you misty-eyed (or is it just me?). They share memes and rage comics, while you are still deciphering what “LOLWUT” means. You realize that there is no such thing as “Love at first sight”, what they showed in the movies of the boy getting the girl was just the prologue. They never showed us the compromises and shit they had to go through to make it work. We slowly realize that Love is not about swinging to a tune in the Swiss Alps after all.

You learn to gauge between right and wrong, between friends and acquaintances. You realize friendships aren’t forever only memories are, the more new people you meet, the more the images of your good old friend keeps fading away from your mind, and despite what they say you would never be in touch for long. The world is filled with interesting people each more different than the last, the more we move forward the more we keep meeting. You no more want to screw things up with your recklessness, but instead you want to prevent things from screwing up. You learn to keep a leash on your tongue, and also on your heart. You don’t judge things/people by their exterior, but instead learn to appreciate for what they are on the inside. Family gatherings scare the shit out of you because someone or the other would bring in that million dollar question “So when are you planning to settle down?” like as if right now you are volatile bouncing about the four walls of the room high on drugs, ready to explode any moment. It is strange why a question of getting married is phrased as “Settling down” when actually marriage leaves you anything but “settled down”.

I prefer being young, reckless and stupid–to have my immaturity as an excuse to blame all my mistakes on. I could maintain this façade of being in my early twenties, with a devil-may-care attitude, but grow up we have to do someday, as one cannot fight Time for it leaves the sharpest of swords rusty (no, I am not referring to the penis here) but also, have I told you that Time is a great teacher?

Now if you’ll ‘scuse me I have to go and snip out these gray hairs off of my head.

  

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Well, I hear you. It is not just the day of birthday every year that one feels closer to feeling old. You are right, when third base became fourth base, I knew I was one generation older. Anyhow, oldage is a bitch and everything is transient. But, friends you will need, so I pray you don't be cynical there. At the expenses of sounding almost needy, I have tried hard to keep in touch with the old friends. Sometimes just the memories are worth wrapping oneself up to sleep with, no?

Time is everything - it wounds us, teaches us, scars us, heals us and it does that throughout not just with the 20 to 30 transition. My mother bought a fish pond against my dad's will cuz she doesn't have grandchildren yet. :) So, as much as growing up or being expected to grow up hurts, it comes with the perk of a humility that you have never learnt to live life without making mistakes and the time you come to terms with it almost sort of decreases every time perhaps?

I'm with you though a few months older and wiser. ;)