President Packer - Wisdom

I sort of accidentally started blogging through the General Conference talks systematically. This isn't what I intended to do when I started. I started with Bishop Davies and Sister Dalton because their messages had thoughts that I really wanted to share. Elder Cardon came next because his message was really good, too, and it was kind of a special request. The fact that it came next chronologically as well was almost a coincidence. By then I realized I had a pattern going, so I ran with it and blogged about Elder Ballard's message next. This morning, I was planning to blog about President Eyring's talk from the Saturday Morning session, but there were two problems with that: One, it's not really grabbing me right now. If I were to blog about it, I'm not sure what I would say. And Two: I accidentally skipped over President Monson's opening remarks and President Packer's message. So, let's backtrack a little.

Today, I'd like to share my thoughts and highlights from President Packer's talk, focussing specifically on the poem he shared that he started when he was 68. You can read and listen to the poem, and the rest of the talk, here. (It's too long for me to post here.)

The first four stanzas of the poem talk about his reflection on the physical changes that came to him because of age - all negative. Stanzas five and six, however, share his decision that:

If I could now turn back the years,
If that were mine to choose,
I would not barter age for youth,
I’d have too much to lose.

I am quite content to move ahead,
To yield my youth, however grand.
The thing I’d lose if I went back
Is what I understand.

It's well-known, or at least largely understood, that with age comes wisdom. The idea is that the more time passes, the more experiences we have, and the more experience we gain, the wiser we become. It doesn't always happen that way, but it's sort of the norm.

I consider myself a young person. I'm 23 years old, 24 next month. I have almost two and a half decades on me, compared to President Packer's seven, at the time he wrote that part of the poem. So, I'm just a little older than a third of what his age was at the time. According to the math, it would make sense for him to be at least three times wiser then than I am now. And I don't doubt that.

In addition to my opinion concerning my relative age, I also have an opinion concerning my relative wisdom, which opinion is given supporting evidence by the "age begets wisdom" formula referred to above. Basically, I consider myself an idiot (and if you need to see some evidence supporting that hypothesis, I can provide you with some). I know that I have some wisdom, but it never feels like enough. According to the formula, I'll gain wisdom with age, but I suppose wisdom is coupled with patience, another virtue I lack.

However, despite the limited nature of my current level of wisdom, I know that there isn't much point in beating myself up about it. So perhaps I'll change the subject slightly, and maybe get back to this one later.

The next section of President Packer's poem came ten years later, at age 78. In it, he shares the following gems of wisdom:

I would agree I’ve learned some things
I did not want to know,
But age has brought those precious truths
That make the spirit grow. 

... 

I have not changed my mind one bit
About regaining youth.
We’re meant to age, for with it
Comes a knowledge of the truth.

In these stanzas, I've just noticed, President Packer hints at a principle that I learned while on my mission: Wisdom is dependent on knowledge. To illustrate that thought, picture this: There are two doors; one on the left, one on the right, and you have to go through one of them. Which will you choose? Without the knowledge of what lies behind either door, you are unable to make a wise decision about which door to choose.

The same goes with our other choices in life. We're constantly faced with many choices that affect our future, but, not being able to predict the future, we don't always know where our choices will lead. That lack of knowledge leads to a lack of wisdom, which (unless we're lucky) may lead to foolish choices. However, once we've made the choice and are able to observe the results, we gain experience or knowledge which may help us make wise choices in the future.

The things which President Packer "did not want to know" may have been the results of negative experiences. For example, a person may gain the knowledge that "Getting punched hurts." One way to gain that piece of knowledge is by getting punched... and that hurts. I'm sure that President Packer would rather not know (at least, not by personal experience) that getting punched hurts, but I bet he does know that, so he must have learned it somehow.

Thankfully, personal experience is not the only source of knowledge. We don't always have to learn something first-hand; we can be told. That's why we have prophets. Sure, we could learn from our own experience that committing sin is a bad idea, and some people do. However, if we can be told by prophets "don't do that," and then be wise enough not to do it, we don't have to learn first-hand how bad sin is, so we can avoid that negative experience.

Unfortunately, while we can gain some knowledge without experience, we can also have experiences without gaining knowledge or wisdom. Sometimes we make the same mistake repeatedly. In which case, we haven't really learned yet. Perhaps we will learn, in time, if we make an effort to learn.

There are also some things which cannot be learned except by personal experience. That is, after all, one of the chief reasons we came to earth - to gain experience. If we could just be told everything we ever needed to know, there'd be no need to gain experience here. Of course, we'd still have to be tested, and be given an opportunity to make our own choices, so we would have to come to earth without our previously-gained knowledge. And to make right choices, we'd need wisdom, which means that we'd need some source of knowledge, and not all of us humans have had access to prophetic counsel, so we'd need a way to gain knowledge and wisdom ourselves, possibly through experience.

It's also possible to have knowledge, but not wisdom. For example, a person may know that getting punched hurts, but he may still pick a fight anyway. We can be given knowledge, but I don't think we can be given wisdom. I think we have to earn that ourselves. That would require experience, and gaining experience takes time. An older person has had a lot of time, so they've probably had many experiences, which means that they've had many chances to gain wisdom, so an old person is probably wise. I know President Packer is.