Most of us have this template within us which we are given from multiple sources in our upbringing about the wisdom of the elder. The old Indian Chief is sitting by the campfire surrounded in his lodge by the eager and respectful braves ready to soak up his words for life. They listen attentively as he dispenses his knowledge to them. His wisdom becomes theirs. Their pathway can do no better than to follow his, and they embrace this fact.
The accuracy and truthfulness of this template may exist somewhere in another land, another time, and another place. It does not really exist here. In our land, in our place, where we live, it is more of a fantasy and simply a false ideal. In the actual reality of this template, the Indian Chief's life knowledge is ever changing, ever evolving. The wisdom he is dispensing today will be different in a few months. It is already different today from what it was last year. What he believes about the Great Spirit in this life lesson is going to change either subtly or significantly in the next.
As he talks, the young braves are wondering why they must be there listening to this old man when they already know more than he does already. They believe that the beginning of knowledge was born when they were. Their certainty about all that is to come belies his concern about all they cannot know yet. He is, an archetype, an anachronism, a burden to be maybe respected but mostly tolerated.
I think a parent can never really know the son or daughter. Then I would keep saying this is equally true for all family, friends, coworkers, any and all human beings. We are all a mystery to each other no matter how completely intimate we may think we are with another.
This is because we are all traveling a different path in life. We often assume it is the same path and that some of us have just traveled further along it while the rest of us still have a long and further way to go. But, for each of us, there is a unique path on which we find ourselves walking. On these individual paths, there are no right answers, no wrong questions, no better life plans, no worse strategies. There is no further along or too far behind.
There is only the individual wisdom each of carries with us as we travel our path, make our choices, and live out our lives. And that wisdom is often lost in our words when we try to express it to others.
Bill J
(content from The Wisdom Is Lost In the Words)