Where you stand depends on where you sit!

We are being tried as a country in so many ways all at the same time, we should give ourselves credit for whatever efforts we can muster to address the inherent conflicts on what is happening around us every day.

Many older people apparently grow more patient as they grow older, despite the fact that they obviously have less time ahead to have and see the things they want to happen. They have learned that patience provides the virtue and comfort of peace of mind.

Younger people –  with lots of time ahead of them – are often impatient, always eager to skip ahead to the next phases of their lives, and insufficiently appreciative of the fact that impatience often causes them to miss many important experiences in the passages that mark their lives.

This difference between the ages appears to be counterintuitive because the effect of time horizons appears reversed: being older would suggest impatience to get more done. Being younger SHOULD indicate patience because they have their whole lives ahead of them Why is this so??

The inversion, of course, is perspective – older people value the benefits of experience and the serenity of peace of mind; younger people are restlessly impatient to get ahead — and as any parent who’s ever been asked “are we there yet?” knows, for younger folks waiting can be insufferable.

This well-disguised phenomenon may be more important in our world than we realize, because it puts young and old into very different and often difficult competing positions, not on substance, but more because of their dissimilar perspectives.

What can be done to defuse the problems associated with this general phenomenon?

Other than exposing (explaining) it at large, or simply in any specific context, there really is not much to do. It is like the old wisdom that ‘you shouldn’t tell a tall man to be short’ – because he simply can NOT comply.

Yet, if more people come to understand the underlying issue, the overall larger effect of the problem might decline?

Unless, of course, Trump demonstrates his new anti-ageing pill, to be marketed under the brand name “Forever Orange”?