You can’t put an old head on young shoulders
My grandmother used to quote this to me often. She was such a wise woman, born long before her time. I would love the opportunity, at my age today, to sit down and talk to her. She is the one behind me and much of my work and writing. His wisdom often guides me today from the other side. His words from my childhood still echo in my head for a long time.
‘You cannot put an old head on young shoulders’ is an old Gaelic saying (proverb) and it is no wonder many of its sayings originally came from there. Many of these old sayings give us insight into how these people thought about things like the qualities of generosity and humility and the company of others. On the other hand, boasting and stinginess were, and still are, frowned upon at best. However, a great understanding of people’s weaknesses and faults was demonstrated. And that is still true in Gaelic culture today.
Wisdom is the gift of time and experience. The older I get, the more I see and understand how impossible it is to expect someone to have knowledge long before their time or age. Maturity comes as we age, as a result of the experiences we have had and without these we remain stuck where we are.
There are people I know today, who are older adults, who have not yet matured in their own emotional health. I know people who as children were emotionally marked by things that happened in their lives that they have not been able to cope with, thus becoming victims of their past.
And then sometimes we see or hear people who have ‘old heads on young shoulders’ (similar to the idiom ‘wise beyond their years’) and marvel at the wisdom that comes from such a short life experience. Sometimes children come up with expressions or information that is amazing, which leaves one wondering where that came from, since they had not had the experience to have that much depth. They act older and wiser, and sometimes they have a much older disposition of their own peer group, which tends to coincide with their growth over time.
We often hear people say ‘if only we knew, when we were young, what we know now, how different our life would be’. I wonder. If we knew, our life would have been different and our lessons would not have been the same. We have come into this life to learn certain things that depend on the type of learner we are. Some of us are slower than others to get the message and others get it fast.
I believe that depending on the senses that are strongest in us, we get our lessons using the ones that are there for us. Personally, I am an experimental learner, which means I have to do it, feel it and understand it to learn the lesson or the skill. I’m not an auditory, so I don’t expect to learn that way.
The three basic styles that have been talked about for many years are Visual, Auditory, and Kinesthetic (touch and movement oriented). As the digital age has arrived, we now find that there is a fourth sensory style of digital learning that leads us to another way of understanding our younger age groups called Auditory Digital.
Do you understand your own sensory force? This can be life changing for people to understand if it is a new concept. We need to communicate and understand that everyone communicates from their own sensory style, which means that unless we know something about the style we can misinterpret the person and what they want or need. The five main senses we talk about are sight, hearing, touch, smell, and taste. Intuition presents itself as a sixth sense.
As adults, we should not expect a young person to have the wisdom or maturity associated with older people, although we are sometimes surprised by today’s youth who sometimes think and speak far beyond their age.
We often hear someone refer to a person as an ‘old soul’, which also refers to appearing older and more knowledgeable, with greater wisdom than their own age group. Many believe that certain children are unusually mature because they have somehow retained the maturity learned from past lives.
We can revert the saying to a ‘young head on old shoulders’, which would mean that someone is still mentally astute, despite being older in years. Sometimes we say that someone older is “young at heart”, which means that they have the ability to see things from a younger perspective and live a life similar to that of the younger age group.
So, if you are lucky enough to meet a young person who has the disposition of someone much older, enjoy your perception of life as it can be quite refreshing to see things from your younger / older perspective. The same goes for someone who is in middle age but shows that he prefers to be with people of a younger age group that tends to stimulate him and his thoughts to stay informed, mentally active and alive.
