Thinking Out Loud : Old and stupid, Young and brilliant
Experience is more than just surviving
For whatever reason it seems as if holidays always have a negative effect on us. We got clobbered by Covid last Christmas and we’re still not over it. Thanksgiving was a few days ago and I’m under the weather again, so I was digging through the Grassroots junk pile and settled on the following for Thinking Out Loud. However, I’m editing it heavily because it was written probably 30 years ago, and, while the subject is still very timely, it’s based on the concept of “experience”. Inasmuch as I was a young twerp then (50ish, barely a true adult), and I’m much more aged now (as with fine wine and smooth whisky), I couldn’t keep from infusing it with recently gained insights.
Grassroots:
Life is a great teacher, but only if we listen to it
Every time I get on an airliner, I glance in the cockpit hoping to find an abundance of gray hair. I know that’s an age-elitist thing to say, but I just feel better when I know whomever is driving the bus has been there a long, long time. However, I do that knowing “gray” doesn’t guarantee “good” any more than “young” guarantees “bad.”
Now that I’ve joined the gray guys’ club, I can look around and see there are just as many folks with limited life skills in my peer group now as there were when I was a kid. Assuming I was ever a kid. And I find that curious. They’re all older. Why aren’t they wiser? More knowing? Better at doing? They’ve had all that time to learn things but evidently haven’t.
Life is just like flying and vice versa. Both are essentially a skill that, as the years and hours go by, it is embellished and polished by that gossamer thing called “experience”. The process is so subtle that, without even trying, we get better at what we do. We’ve had more things happen to us, so, theoretically, we know more. “Experience” is the result of life’s journey that normally has a bunch of twists and turns that are continually testing us and giving us lots of opportunity to learn from our mistakes. In fact, it’s a common saying that a man (or woman) is the sum total of their mistakes. I, however, disagree with that. Or at least would add a caveat or two.
During our journey from youngster to gray beard, every hour we’re in the air or just living life is an opportunity to learn something and, as was just pointed out, often, that “something” is the result of us doing something wrong. We made an almost invisible mistake, like continually being off altitude. We know that’s not right and that mistake is an opportunity to better ourselves. So, we do. Why then, do some get better than others? We all screw things up in a similar fashion. However, some folks seem to drift out in front of the crowd as better in terms of both flying and life skills. Why?
First, I don’t agree that a man’s experience and knowledge are based upon his own mistakes and only on what he/she’s experienced. The smart money doesn’t have to make all the mistakes to gain the knowledge. Those people who often become good pilots or have successful lives while in their twenties or thirties, haven’t lived long enough to make all the mistakes or have all the experiences. So why are they so smart and so good so young? Partially, it’s because they discovered a very basic fact of learning early on: First, you work your butt off to get better. Second, they realize they don’t have to make all the mistakes or have all the experiences themselves. They’ve realized the key to multiplying learning is through the lives of those around them, both good and bad.
As we paddle through life’s pond, everyone around us is learning life exactly the same way we are. However, their journeys are never identical to ours. They are experiencing different bumps and life detours, many of which are visible to those around them. If we listen carefully to those who have bumbled into a thunderstorm or hit a cow crossing the road we don’t need to have that experience ourselves to profit from it. Just keeping our heads up and our eyes and ears open to what’s going on around us means we’ll expand our experience by piggy backing the experiences of others.
The exact opposite are those people who go through life with their eyes narrowly focused on life’s white stripe in front of them, never noticing what, or whom, they are passing along the way. When someone travels through life with their nose on the center line, their experiences are only their own and are limited by the curbs that define their path. When someone doesn’t peek over the fence to find out what others are doing or experiencing, then there is no way they can expand outside of themselves and their own little world.
When someone spends their life living in the middle of the envelope or center of the road, while making no effort to venture off on the side roads and/or borrow from the experiences of others, they stand a very real chance of living a version of the movie Groundhog Day: it’s the same day, the same flight hour, the same mile, over and over. That’s not experience. That’s turning the crank and watching life go by without ever really taking advantage of it. That’s why we have gray dogs who are exceptional and those who definitely aren’t. Those in the lead have learned so many lessons from others’ experiences, they’re light years ahead of those who weren’t benefitting from those around them.
Is the foregoing the wrong way to live life? Who knows? Certainly not me! I’m not good at coming up with profound conclusions. Further, even though I’m continually tuned into others and often find myself running off into the ditch while trying something new, lots of folks see my life as being a staid, conservative, centerline existence. This is because they’re the hair-on-fire types and are so far from the middle of the envelop, I’m not even sure they’re still in it. The concept of middle-of-the-envelope/road living is open to definition: everyone is going to see it differently. However, 100% of the time, those who live life with their nose on the centerline don’t realize how much worthwhile knowledge is passing them by on either side and they arrive at old age unchanged.
Don’t kid yourself, it’s really easy to wind up gray, old and stupid.
Oops! Did I just unintentionally make a political statement? I’m sorry! bd
Back when I was teaching English, I was ever being asked, “Why do we have to read this stuff. My reply was always the same: There are three ways to be successful; learning from your own mistakes (almost always painful), and learning from the mistakes of others. Almost always easier. Reading about what has made successful people successful by their mistakes and their victories. Always, always easier. I don’t know any of those wise old grey guys who haven’t been voracious readers. Pick up those books, kids.
In the Flying world it seems some people are happy with good enough? I'm always trying to do it better the next time, or improve on past experience. Over time your errors become smaller, and your acceptable performance becomes smoother. My goal is to feel the wheels turning in the grass just before a smooth touchdown. And over time we improve our performance by flying different vehicles, not by doing the same thing in the same vehicle over and over. All planes are great, but all are different, and some more friendly than others. So after many planes you get like a test pilot and expect certain things from certain types. Wing on top, wing on the bottom, square or tapered, big engine or small. All are fun, but all are different, and Grey hair only says you have had a lot of different experiences to add to your memory (if you take notes).