It is said that there are two sure ways to access wisdom.

1. He lives next door to the Dalai Lama, or
2. Living more time.

Since moving to Dharamshala and finding the Dalai Lama at home might cause difficulties, we can only hope that wisdom comes with aging.

Although Winnie the Pooh’s owl is a symbol of sagacity and Athena is recognized as the Greek goddess of wisdom, there are No consensus on a definition of wisdom. And while the exact relationship between age and wisdom is unclear, aging is often associated with increased wisdom. Even in studies where participants were asked to nominate people they considered wise, the average age of nominees was 55 or older: Gandhi, Confucius, Socrates, the Pope, Queen Elizabeth.

A long list of qualities appears time and again in studies examining the subject of wisdom, including:

• intelligence (including emotional intelligence) and knowledge,
• an understanding of human nature,
• emotional resilience,
• modesty,
• the ability to learn from experience,
• opening, and
• Superior judgment and problem solving skills.

So a link between age and wisdom is understandable.

The seminal Berlin Wisdom Project found not only that the old are not wiser, but that wisdom also begins to decline around 75. However, when emotional factors are included, the old seem to have a better chance of becoming wiser than younger people who have not had enough experience.

The concept of wisdom increasing with age did not become the subject of scientific study until the 1950s, when psychoanalyst Erik Erikson created a theory of eight stages of the human life cycle. In Erikson’s last stage, old age, people struggle with the balance between their personal sense of wholeness and defeat in the face of death and physical disintegration. If integrity wins, the result, according to Erikson, is wisdom.

In the 1980s, Erikson updated his life cycle with the knowledge that had come to him upon reaching the age of 87. Erikson decided that the lesson learned at each of the stages prior to that eighth cycle somehow added to the potential wisdom of old age. .

It seems that Oscar Wilde came close to hitting the nail on the head when he said: ‘With age comes wisdom, but sometimes age comes alone.’