Arthur C. Brooks argues wisdom comes from wrestling with hard questions, not collecting answers. He warns that advice from elders often fails because their reality map doesn't match your terrain. The real work is identifying the questions you avoid, like how much time you have left with people you love.
Do you believe that you can speed up your wisdom this way by actually talking to people who are further along in life than you are? Speeding up wisdom is an interesting question. I don't think that wisdom is about answers as much as it is about the willingness to ask difficult questions. And so when people seek out elders, I think what they're typically looking for is the answer. I'm like, oh, okay, you know, Dr. Brooks, what is the answer to how I do this or that? And you give me, based on your map of reality, what the answer might be. And the challenge with that is that the person who you're seeking out for the wisdom, their map may not match your terrain. And so if you try to apply these things directly, it might not actually work. What you should seek out when you're speaking to people who have more earned experience than you is, what are those universal questions that we are avoiding as individuals? For me, that one question of how much time do I really have left with the people that I care about most, that was a difficult question that would have been much easier to avoid. That sparked this insight or this wisdom in my life. But it wasn't the answer necessarily. It was the fact that I was willing to uncover and then wrestle with the question that really led to it.
