It’s a slow fade into obscurity. But who’s loss is it?

The crinkling of the corners of the eyes. The papery skin of the hands. The unsteady gait. They all signal for respect, a momentary deference, then dismissal.

Youth deeply inhales its’ own invincibility, its’ own infallibility. Silently it shouts disapproval of a remark, an interjection, leaving the elder to quiet, to recede as expected, while all the while she is thinking you may consider otherwise, but is too polite, too caring to intercede again.

A person of any age should consider the hulking specter of hubris and arrogance. If the thread of the conversation has changed, why not entertain the change? Perhaps it will lead to a place more interesting, more challenging, more valuable.

Perhaps politeness is not enough. Maybe we are all, regardless of age, better served to greedily harness the wisdom of the next thirty or forty years, to hear, to learn, to better understand what lies ahead by better understanding what has come before.

Knowledge, in whatever form, is never passe’. If one has the will, the desire, the intellectual curiosity to form the necessary connections to whatever lies in discussion, and there will invariably be many, it is a dreadfully missed opportunity not to do so.

There is a Circean draw to the sound of one’s own voice, and to the voices of those who inhabit one’s own echo chamber. Youth invigorating youth, the age-centric group propelling forward, as it should be, even if the map has been cast aside.

Yet to each successive generation, you will astound, you will soar to unimaginable heights, but your accomplishments, regardless how spectacular, will not occur in a vacuum.

Look beneath you, you are standing on the shoulders of all who have come before.