Wisdom and age
by
, 02-07-2017 at 12:37 AM (11676 Views)
When I was in my 20s, there's a story I loved to tell. It's a true story.
When I was going to college, I moved in with my father. The first big snowstorm of the year, he and I went out to shovel the driveway. My father is an engineer, and he spent quite some time looking over the driveway and the available tools and deciding on the most efficient way to do the job with minimal effort. I, on the other hand, grabbed a shovel and started moving snow.
By the time he had finished planning and plotting, I had cleared out 1/3 of the driveway.
In my 20s, I thought this was a brilliant Buddhist parable made all the better for the fact that it was true.
That is wisdom in your 20s.
Years later, more years than I'm willing to admit, a thought occurred to me.
That was my first year at that address. It was not his.
My father had his method worked out before the first snowflake fell, and a key point of that method was to do smurfing nothing until I had completed 1/3 of the job.
That is wisdom in your 40s .
I realise I do not come out well in that story, but lesson learned.