A Deeper Meaning to Wisdom


     There is a saying, with age comes wisdom, and this idea is repeatedly shown in Song of Solomon. Most of his life, Milkman has lacked the knowledge of his family’s past and his connections to them. This is represented by the uneven lengths of his feet. As he grew older, he was presented with more facts; this is why his shorter foot “looked just as long as the other” (Morrison). The ideology that with age comes wisdom is widely accepted in society today. However, I believe something a little different. I believe that knowledge is achieved through experiences rather than time. Many people believe with age comes wisdom, but how true is that? Well, not very true. In reality, with experience comes wisdom. In other words, the more experiences you encounter the more knowledge you are bound to obtain. By experiences, I mean encountering something new, something out of ordinary, or something odd. Well to make this clearer, let me give you an example. Imagine a 65-year-old who has followed the same routine for nearly their whole life, they are most likely going to have no new knowledge. On the other hand, a 25-year-old who has taken every new opportunity presented to them will have more wisdom. This 25-year-old will take all their new experiences to create new knowledge, while the 65-year-old won’t be able to create new knowledge from the lack of experiences. Also, people say that age comes with more experiences; however, experience is unique to each individual and isn’t necessarily parallel with age.

Comments

  1. Jahnavi BNovember 19, 2017 at 3:22 PM

    Neha, this is such an interesting post! I completely agree that it is with experience that one gains wisdom, and not necessarily with age. All too often, we believe that age and experience are interchangeable, but Milkman's character and his late bloom into maturity are a reminder that we all grow wiser as we are exposed to the world, and not by simply by growing old with it.

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