Continuity.
The process of developing wisdom!
Hey everyone - Adam here.
I’ve found the chance to begin to understand human development fascinating due to inspiration from a class I’m currently enrolled in for grad school. It’s helping me consider each stage of one’s life as a part of the holistic entity that is our lives! From being a baby, toddler, progressing through our childhood, teenage years, young adulthood, middle adulthood, to being a senior citizen, etc…
A quick quote that I’d like to share that helped spur this interest is about children and how they have both a current mental age and a mental age potential. This idea made me think, but what about the adult’s current mental age and mental age potential? What is the upper limit of mental age potential? Could we essentially possess timeless mental age potentials? Socrates would say so!
Further reading into a textbook for grad school “Theories of Human Development,” I came across the idea of continuity. Continuity “operates as a higher order feature of the way a person conceptualizes, and experiences new activities based on memories and accomplishments from the past”.
Embedded within this understanding of life gained from memories and accomplishments from the past, must be wisdom, right?
It reminds me of an Alan Watts quote “it is of definite advantage of the philosopher, to get older.” This quote assumes that as one ages, we gain wisdom in perspective, and through our understanding.
I would say each human being is a philosopher, whether or not they realize it, and that despite the physical ailments we may find ourselves situated with later in life, it is of great advantage psychically, as well as spiritually to grow old. This makes me sad with the way senior citizens are often viewed in the United States, and leads me to an open disposition to work with the aging populations as a psychologist to be an advocate for the old (aka, the wise)!
It makes me think of the idea of the way we consciously shape our environments when we are trying to accomplish something, and how this changes as we age.
I always find it fascinating to impose rules on myself until I get something done that I know I need to finish. For example, in order to allow myself to listen to music today (a passion of mine), I am making myself finish my homework first to unlock this capability. This serves as a reminder that we as individuals are active agents in creating, modifying and changing our environments.
To further explore the idea of making environments conducive with our goals, I’ll share another example of how I’ve used this idea in the past of no music UNTIL X gets accomplished.
When one of my goals for the day is creative expression which often happens musically for me, I make it so that, the only music I am able to hear, is the music I myself create. This yet again, is an active shaping of my environment so that it becomes conducive to my goals. Withholding something (music) so that I am more likely to participate in the creation of something rather than consumption of it.
To conclude, there is wisdom that one gains through the experiencing of continuity in one’s life. This realization that AH, yes I’ve been here before, and acted this way in the past, and this led to less meaningful outcomes relative to the higher & more wise choice in this moment. Also, as we age we develop more highly articulate ways to shape our environments in a way that allows for more conducive states to move towards our goals.
Now the real question, with this wisdom that I “have” as my 29-year-old self, can I make an impact on future clients/students to realize they have agency in shaping their environments to reach their goals? Let alone, can I share and spread the belief to future clients/humans that they have gotten wiser overtime, just in ways they may not have realized, or still have room to develop more thoroughly? This is the opportunity indeed.
Cheers to lifelong learning,
Adam Bartley