IT all began at forty-five, and therefore, I call it the golden age. It isn’t that I wasn’t wiser before but I had now discovered the invisible door to triumph – and that was solely after a deep failure, but still standing tall in the face of adversity. So was it that I had not worked harder earlier and gave up too soon? Or perhaps I had just accepted and conditioned myself into believing I could not achieve it?
Either way, it was nothing less of a miracle. I had finally liberated myself from the set confinements of peer pressures. You know how they say, when you once learn to swim or cycle, you never unlearn it – no matter what. That is the magical thing about knowledge once attained.
Zapping back and forth between all the years, looking at the titles on my resume, it seemed I could not have been more profound in knowledge at that point in time, but had I actually become wiser also? Not so much. Now please do not confuse wisdom with the emotional quotient, for it is the intelligence quotient I am talking about here.
Middle age is when your fluid intelligence begins to decline, which is the ability to learn, assess and navigate through new situations. However your crystallized intelligence continues to rise, that is the accumulated knowledge you can recall as and when needed. The transitions begin at 40 and through the cascade of black and white, the grey finally starts to make sense to you. You primarily lived through the ups and downs, but you never learnt to embrace the changes.
The most important things, that they never taught you at any age, are not so difficult, but quite basic. How to deal with a loss of a loved one? How to make ends meet with an acquired skill other than your degree? How to learn to say no at times? All these and many more, you finally learn to answer. In these very rapidly changing times, no wonder they say 40 is the new 30. Please do not let anyone convince you otherwise.
In a world full of uncertainty, wisdom of old age is a blessing, if you can navigate your life for the better with the knowledge that only comes with age. You begin to steer your life, and the life of the people around you in that direction. You now have faith in the belief, that there are plans that ‘you’ make and a plan that ‘God’ makes for you.
—The writer is contributing columnist.
