Young people sometimes have this notion that the information we know is obsolete. In some ways, they are absolutely correct. We elders have a similar notion: What the hell are these young people doing? I wonder if their mama knows they’re out here showing out?
Both generations aren’t looking at the whole picture.
Recently, I discussed those pearls of wisdom I call “jewels” in an essay entitled Dropping Jewels. Today, however, I’m thinking about something slightly different: passing along a single message that encompasses scores of triumphs, follies, and seemingly useless facts gathered over a lifetime.
That seems daunting.
How do you reduce all those years to a few words without allowing hindsight to rewrite the story? How do you acknowledge the victories without polishing them, admit the follies without condemning the fool who committed them, and recognize that some of those seemingly useless facts simply haven’t found their moment yet?
We do this in the hope that we can remain objective and tell the truth of the matter, minus our ego.
This, too, is daunting.
Perhaps that is why the message itself must be simple:
Nothing is irrelevant. Everything has its time and place, if you exercise patience and restraint.
Some of what I knew when I was young became obsolete. Some of what I dismissed became indispensable. Some things waited decades before circumstances finally revealed why I had carried them so long. The value wasn’t always in knowing. Sometimes, it was in waiting.
The younger me probably wouldn’t understand that.
He wouldn’t need to.
The message contains all it must, but no more.
Memoirs of Madness 