A Sad Fact of Life: Wisdom Comes Too Late

Ever make a mistake so many times that you thought, ‘Hang this, I’ll never get it!’? This is the experience of life, or at least part of life, for every single one of us, and it’s particularly relevant to our relationships; the closer the relationship often the harder it is to work it out.

“We grow too soon too old too late, too smart….” –Scandinavian/German Proverb.

s

A variant of this is the Dutch saying, “We grow too soon old and too late smart.” Yet another is, “Too soon old, too late wise.”

Mistakes are a way of learning. It’s said we can learn the easy way (by observation) or the hard way (by our mistakes); invariably we are destined to learn and re-learn the same tired things, until that is, we learn them for good.

Take food portion control, for instance. This is one I’ve constantly had to learn and re-learn. And I’m still learning it. Now I’ve reached the point that the pain of having an overly full and bloated stomach for several hours is worse than the reward of thirty minutes of gorging tasty food.

But, it was a process to get there. Now I find it a much better prospect to get that hungry feeling; it’s a pain I enjoy because I’m rewarded by delaying my gratification. So long as this behaviour continues until I form the habit i.e. for a period two to three months, I have a chance of learning the lesson once and for all.

It is a sad fact that with life comes the disappointment that knowledge comes altogether too late. It’s a sweet but sour irony. We may know theory well before it is finally practiced consistently. Such is life.

Copyright © 2008, S. J. Wickham. All Rights Reserved Worldwide.