Mistaken

When I was young I thought I knew everything; I was absolutely convinced of it; there was no surer thing in the world! I now know I was sadly mistaken and knew basically nothing.  This new awareness that settled over me over the course of many decades has invested me with great wisdom and valuable insights, but those individuals who know everything nowadays—the youth of society, of course—treat me as an irrelevant relic terminally infected with advancing, incurable senility. They don’t want or appreciate advice from a doddering old man, just as I never wanted any “words of wisdom” from irrelevant ancients when I was their age either. The concept that as you grow older you grow wiser seems like a logical premise certainly, but to callow individuals it reeks of a bald rationalization.