Everyone ages but not everyone is wise. I was sitting with a woman of wisdom yesterday and I knew it, so I listened closely to what she said. She is 87 years old, but age is not what made her wise, for wisdom is not an age thing, it is a listening thing. Wisdom comes to those who have ears to hear. Many people think they are wise, but as my mom would say, they are just know it alls. You can’t teach a know it all anything, because they think they know everything already. It was such an honor to sit with this woman, for she espoused wisdom with every word she spoke and every word she chose not to speak.

One of the losses in culture today is the loss of generations sitting together, learning from one another. One generation is technology savvy and we need to learn from them about technology, another generation is relationship savvy and we need to learn from them, but there is a generation that does not always get acknowledged and that is those 70 and older who grew up in a completely different culture than the one we are immersed in right now and they carry a wisdom other generations need to hear. My 87 year old friend said to us yesterday, “The difference between my generation and this generation is that my generation was taught to think and this generation is taught to feel.” (Drop the mic)

Her statement caused me to pause, caused me to consider, caused me to hear what she was not saying, for that is all she said. One generation was taught to think, another generation was taught to feel. This statement is loaded with wisdom, loaded with insight and loaded with truth if we can stop and hear what my 87 year old friend said. Feelings are based on circumstances and our interpretation of that situation. Thinking is taking in data, contemplating it, comporting it to other information and then formulating a conclusion. Thinking and feeling are two different ways of doing life. One is not better or worst, but they do produce very distinctly different fruit and I hope we can agree today’s feeling culture has fruit that truly distinct from the generation my friend comes from. Something to ponder this Saturday.