I’m not sure that age means wisdom or that age is at all involved in wisdom. In my opinion wisdom comes from experience, usually painful experience but not necessarily. I’ve known some very wise “younger men” and some incredibly stupid older ones, the defining difference was that the 1 with life experience was far more wise than the mouth breathing old codgers. Some people are only alive by shear accidental coincidence or divine intervention because they damn sure don’t possess the proper faculties for survival. 😉
Aces;
Good evening to you my friend, I hope wherever this finds you that it finds you well since you might be in transit.
If I can be forgiven for making a few less than charitable observations, it's been my direct experience that many folks who have attained "ripe old age" are anything but wise.
Very vividly actually, I can recall an epiphany chatting with a neighbor of my late Mom and Dad's when they'd just moved into a "retirement community" which our part of BC is known for. Not only were they mentally thick and seemingly incapable of reasoning, they were downright miserable. My comment to my good wife later on when discussing my epiphany was something along the line of "I'm surprised someone hasn't smothered them with a pillow years ago".....
That was the first and of course sadly but nonetheless predictably not the last.
While I'll agree partially with your contention that wisdom comes from experience, it also requires the person who has lived the experience to be able to be reasonably brutal with self analysis in order to learn anything.
That thought comes from running into folks who have done the same task wrong - perhaps a thousand times Aces - and equate that with success and doing said task correctly - when in fact they might be just lucky in not injuring themselves at worst or merely doing it the hard way for their entire life at best. But either way they've still not really learned to do the job in question well, not really.
That actually ties in with your last sentence, which I've witnessed repeatedly and agree with completely.
Lastly, I've known far, far too many folks who as they age have their world and by extension their world view shrink so they lose focus on what really and truly might matter. What might matter to them and more importantly to the next shift who need to keep the wheels on and the machine rolling as we turn over the controls.
Anyways Aces, just a few thoughts from a lifetime observer of our fellow humans, but I will say this, it's never too late to change and to begin to learn.
My late father used to laugh in a low chuckle that shook his whole being, touch me on the arm the way old guys seem to do and say, "If you're not learning something son, best look around, as you're likely dead".
Then a couple times he was quiet for a bit, looked hard into my eyes and said, "But you know, some days you're going to find you don't want to learn that again".
Dad was a wise man in my view and in the view of most who knew him.
All the best in your travels Aces.
Dwayne