Older Doesn't Always Mean Wiser, Get It?

While it's true that there's some lessons or a lot of valuable lessons that youngsters can learn from our elders due to the amount of experience they've had but can it be said of all old people? Such is the case of a foolish 4Ps obsessed old man who seems to think that his getting older automatically means that he's getting smarter. Old age tends to bring wisdom but do we forget that sometimes that growing old means one's in the risk of becoming a senile old fool at the same time? An old person could start resisting all forms of changes because one has either Parkinson's or Alzheimer's to deal with.

It's like the situation of my late paternal grandmother who doesn't understand world economics. She was upset that no president could lower the prices of gasoline. I had to explain to her why it's so. Fortunately, she was able to at least understand something all the while I learned a lot about life from her. Grandparents can be right when they say that children these days shouldn't be too stuck on their gadgets when they're eating out with them. As said, there's wisdom in old age but there's also the risk of becoming an old fool. I can go ahead and agree with my paternal grandmother who talked about family respect all the while she still needed to keep learning.

How can someone become an old fool? While accepting change all the time is not good then neither is not accepting it at all. It's all about balance about accepting and rejecting change yet some old people can develop the mentality that we shouldn't try something new because we've got zero experience in it -- which is just utterly stupid. An example is an old fool who thinks that we should just "evolve with it" rather than change the system whenever it's necessary. In short, some old fools may think that the Philippines should stick by the 1987 Constitution even a thousand years from now -- never mind that the Philippine constitution has undergone many changes from the Malolos Constitution, the 1935 Constitution and the 1973 Constitution -- all before it led to their beloved 1987 Constitution.

So when's accepting change good even when you have zero experience in it? It's like you've been living in the squatters' area yet one day you got out of poverty. Isn't it time for you to get a decent housing to live in? That change would be good. When is accepting change not good? It's when you decide to change for the worse. It's like making every succeeding sequel worse than the last instead of trying to make every succeeding sequel better than the last and learning from one's failure. In short, it's a call for a wise acceptance of change instead of just accepting it all the time or not accepting it at all. But I wonder do some old people even realize that they got their wisdom by embracing change whenever necessary back when they were younger? 

Besides, do old people always have experience in being old? No. They had to get used to the issues brought by one's old age. Some old people may look better than the young ones but we can't deny that old age brings various issues. Sometimes, I remember how often a wise old grandmother would say, "Listen to what I have to say before I become senile." The wise old grandmother is wise not because she's old but because she knows how to apply her experience and embraces change when need be.