What A Man Knows

No, I have not fallen off the face of the earth. Things have just gotten a bit off-kilter around here. So much has been going on in my life and in the world, so much that could be said; so much that should be said; good things and bad things. Believe me, I'm filing it all away for future posts. As soon as I get my taxes put together for my accountant, and a little further down the road on a couple of other projects, I plan to get back to blogging regularly. Thank-you for your patience my friends!

In the meantime, here's a thought worth thinking, especially for you guys out there who are my age. It comes from Adlai Stevenson:

What a man knows at fifty that he did not know at twenty is, for the most part, incommunicable. All the observations about life which can be communicated handily are as well known to the man at twenty who has been attentive as to a man at fifty. He has been told them all, he has read them all, but he has not lived them all. What he knows at fifty that he did not know at twenty is not the knowledge of formulas or forms of words but of people, places, actions, a knowledge not gained by words but by touch, sight, sound, victories, failures, sleeplessness, devotion, love - the human experiences and emotions of this earth and oneself and other people; and perhaps too a little faith and a little reverence for things you cannot see.

Quoted in Harold Kushner, When All You've Ever Wanted Isn't Enough, Fireside, 2002, p. 111-112