Conversation & Status

It is good to be aware of where one stands. As I get older, I discover snippets of memory that - if they are to be believed - tell me that I have not always known this.

At 29, I am profoundly aware that I am a young man. Not wise, not old, not looked up to, not being depended upon to give direction. I am not married and (naturally) have no children. This gives me a certain freedom that I would not allow old men, and will myself give up should I ever earn the privilege of being called old.

That freedom is the ability to think out loud - which, as one of my friends once very perceptively (and perhaps wryly) pointed out, is mine in abundance. I am prepared to tolerate the disadvatages partly because I am deeply, deeply suspicious of attempts to package up the world in little definition-packages of objective truth, and only slightly less suspicious of most of the people who make the attempts. Given that this is what I used to do and admire (and perhaps be), I often feel a newness & freshness being revealed by my refusal to continue emulating it. Quite the existential discovery.

A wise old man is not, I think, hemmed in or tyrannised by philosophy, but is the master of it. He is someone who speaks graciously to the need of the moment, edifying those who hear. He speaks whatever will communicate the thing needing to be heard. He is a Nathan to David, or a Priscilla & Aquila to Apollos - a Solomon to his son. To this I aspire. Every time I feel that I have done less than this, as judged by the requirements of my current status, I feel shame.

So, by degrees, I am already giving up the freedom of youth. I do not permit myself to say all that I might, and am especially careful around those I know or suspect do look up to me in some way. Furthermore, I assume (and, to a large extent rely upon) a fencing in by those old men who are wiser, those who will speak the need of the moment and teach me. In that way, perhaps I know my station much better now than when the arrogance - or is it naivete? - of teenaged certainty held me. Yet I still err, and no doubt frequently. I expect to be taught.

Thank you to all those who are to me as wise old men.