Back When I Had All The Answers

A few years ago, I read an article by a fairly old gent who included a photo of himself as a young professional, barely out of graduate school and placed in a managerial position. “This was me when I had all the answers,” he wrote.

Old age brings wisdom and truth. Or, it better or we have been fooling ourselves for a lifetime. Some people do that; they started life feeling they had all the answers, long before they knew what the questions would be. Life was black and white; situations were this or that; there was a book somewhere with everything spelled out clearly.

Then you get older and realize that there is an increasing amount of gray area. Life is not that simplistic, answers are not that easy and sometimes there are no answers. Instead of finding the right choice, there are occasions when all the choices are bad and you have to see which is the least bad and go with it.

Not only is life not that simplistic, but it can be terribly complicated and we learn to beware of people who come down the street with the easy answers, with the absolute answers. We have to ask ourselves if their heads have been in the sand or up their ass. Have they really matured, or are they dodging the issues of life by remaining emotionally children, where all issues are still this or that?

I think there should have been an Eleventh Commandment. Something like this: “And do your best; that’s all I can ask of you. Do your best.”