Compared to my 50-year-old self, I’m kind of an idiot. I know this because I’m currently 45. When I was 40, I thought I had a pretty good grasp on life. I knew I didn’t know everything, obviously, but when I look back at where I was five years ago, it feels like that guy didn’t really know what he was talking about. Of course, he knew more than the 35-year-old me, or god forbid the 25-year-old me.
This has become a bit of a ritual. Every five years or so, I look back at the last version of me and take inventory: what I knew, what I thought I knew, what I was pretending to know. With each half-decade jump there are fewer “what the fuck was he thinking” moments, but still enough to make it obvious that five years from now I’ll look back at this guy (me, right now, feeling pretty confident about my worldview) and I’ll see the blind spots I can’t see yet.
I think most people feel this way. I hope so. I can’t imagine being the sort of person who holds the exact same beliefs at fifty that he had at twenty. That kind of stasis feels more like decay than conviction. At some point you have to let a few of your old certainties die of natural causes.
I think one thing this perspective gives me, this habit of looking back and realizing how much I didn’t know, is a kind of humility. I’m not going to call it wisdom. I certainly haven’t earned that. But Socrates said the only true wisdom is knowing you know nothing, and if the old philosopher was onto something, maybe I’m at least pointed in the right direction.
The older I get, the more suspicious I am of my own certainty. Whenever I catch myself getting too firm in a conviction, I try to walk around it, poke at the seams, ask myself what I’m missing. Because I’m definitely missing something. Maybe something small, maybe something huge. I won’t know which until later, when I’m looking back at this version of me again, shaking my head.
Not to make assumptions about lifespan, but I wonder if the eighty-year-old me will feel the same way about the seventy-five-year-old me? Maybe by then I’ll have gathered enough knowledge to finally understand what’s actually true and right, my worldview set in stone, and find myself sitting on a park bench somewhere dispensing wisdom to grandchildren or whoever will stop long enough to listen.
Or maybe not. Maybe that old man will look back on all those younger versions of himself and see that it was always the same story, thinking you’ve finally arrived somewhere solid, only to feel the ground shift again and realizing it never ends. Maybe by then he’ll know better than to offer advice at all and just keep reading, keep learning, keep living, right up until they start shoveling dirt on the coffin.
Of course, there are certain things I’ve figured out that haven’t changed and probably won’t. Some of my political views will keep shifting. Perhaps some of my opinions about success, purpose, work, ambition will keep evolving.
But then there’s the simple stuff (or at least the stuff that should be simple) that holds up no matter how much everything else changes. Like how it’s always better to be kind than cruel. Better to be honest and polite and to do your best not to hurt people if you can help it. To be present with the people you love, and even with the people you don’t, and to be present with yourself too, because you don’t get these moments back. To be careful with our words and actions and not take time for granted. And to have patience with people, because everyone’s in this same cycle. The person who frustrates you now, the one you’re arguing with or judging, will be a different person a few years from now, and so will you.
And maybe that’s all there is to do anyway, just keep trying to understand, keep adjusting the lens a little with each new version of yourself. If nothing else, it at least keeps the conversation going, even if you’re mostly just arguing with your own ghost.
The Truth About Tigers 