I saw a meme float by in my Pinterest stream that had a quote supposedly from Ernest Hemingway. The quote said that "The great fallacy was the wisdom of old men. They do not grow wise, they grow careful."
The definition of fallacy is a false notion, a statement or an argument based on a false or invalid inference, incorrectness of reasoning or belief, erroneous. So I find the quote a lot more careful because of the experiences I've had over the years and I'm trying not to do things out of urgency which I did for so much of my life.
But I still like to think that I'm doing it out of wisdom and not just being careful. Being careful is is exercising wisdom in a lot of cases. For the past few years, I've listened to the book of Proverbs, one chapter at a time each month.
That means every year I read Proverbs 12 times or more. I may not get the last chapter because there's only 30 days in a month, but reading a chapter at a time, one for each day of the month, has really worked well for me.
And, as it soaks into my brain. I steep in it, I feel like I'm getting wiser. I also wonder at the source of this quote, if Ernest Hemingway truly said this, he said a lot of things that people quote, and he's a celebrated author and famous guy that happened to be an alcoholic who lived in Key West and was involved in plane crashes and generally hiding from the world while he generated books.
So I don't know that I agree with him that it's a fallacy that older men are wise. I also again wonder why we celebrate these kind of people. This guy was no shining knight and not the best example of a stable male personality that was dedicated to a wife and children.
In fact, he got into a lot of trouble in multiple ways. And like so many of the other artists that our society celebrates, I just wonder why we celebrate this guy.
I actually think that's part of why I write and blog because we celebrate him because we have his words in writing in a book that we can go and get off of a shelf.
I want my words out there so that someday maybe somebody will celebrate me in that way.
You never know.
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