Does Wisdom Come With Age?

This episode of You Still Have Time centers on the theme “Does Wisdom Come with Age?”, but it begins with a serious discussion about recent political violence and civic responsibility.

We normally avoid politics and religion but feel compelled to address reports of government troops killing two citizens during protests. We believe administration and media portrayal of  these events are a troubling sign for American democracy. 

Our conversation moves back to the main topic of wisdom and aging. We discuss how true wisdom involves experience, knowledge, and good judgment — qualities that ideally grow with time. We share personal reflections on realizing, often too late, that parents’ advice was valuable and that humility and openness to learning are key signs of maturity. Harold cites a Buddhist saying about keeping one’s cup “empty” to remain open to learning, while Hope emphasizes self-acceptance, authenticity, and the fading need to please others.

We reflect humorously on how values change with age — prioritizing comfort over appearance, function over status — and share anecdotes about clothing, cars, and shifting priorities. The conversation closes on a hopeful note: urging older listeners to see their experiences as valuable contributions, to share their insight with younger people, and to stay engaged in shaping the nation's future, whether by protesting, donating, or informing others.

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Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:11

Hello and welcome to You Still Have Time, the podcast for old people. We're your hosts, I'm Pope.

SPEAKER_02 0:18

And I'm Harold, the other old person.

SPEAKER_00 0:21

And we welcome you to this episode that we uh are calling Does Wisdom Come with Age? But before we get kind of started on that topic, we're gonna segue a little bit. You wanna tell them why, honey?

SPEAKER_02 0:40

Yeah. When we initially started this podcast, we had attempted to stay away from topics of religion and politics because we know how controversial those topics can often be. But we're now in the third week of January of 2026, and two people have been murdered by government troops. These are people who have, as far as we know, done nothing wrong. Um they're executing their rights as citizens of a a free nation, and uh they were murdered. And it's just hard for for me and me to to ignore it. I think that uh in keeping with this topic of does wisdom come with age, we see it for what it is. The the press has I mean, there have been certain government sources have tried to say that these folks were terrorists terrorists or resisting resisting, trying to murder ICE officials.

SPEAKER_00 1:53

Right. And I guess the hardest thing for me to understand is how people can look at the same images, look at the same videos that have been published and come up with such vastly different thoughts about what happened. People who, you know, were not trying to harm anybody, but were just summarily taken out, and I don't know the reason for that. I don't know why these ICE troops have been given carte blanche when it comes to using their weapons. I don't know why they're using their weapons against people who were just protesting. I thought that the whole role of ICE was to find those people who immigrated here illegally, were living here illegally, who were criminals, not people who were going to their, you know, appointments trying to get citizenship, not people who were taking their kids to school, not people I, you know, I just don't understand. I I don't, and I'm very emotional about it because I'm tired of crying over this nonsense. And we're old enough or should be old enough to understand what's happening here. This is the dissolution of whatever the the the the vision of America is supposed to be. And it seems like we might have taken a step or two forward and now we're running in reverse.

SPEAKER_02 3:43

I think that this topic that we started with does wisdom come with age? It should. It should. Uh early on in our pro previous podcast, we talked about a feeling that so many of us have of helplessness. We don't we're not members of Congress, we don't have millions of dollars to spend. And we've often say said each one of us can do something. And I think it's time for all of us to do something. We've seen these massive rallies throughout the nation. We're gonna have to continue. We're gonna have to continue to protest, we're gonna have to continue to march, we're gonna have to continue to raise our voices, because this cannot continue. This cannot continue.

SPEAKER_00 4:34

No, that not if we want the United States to to last, to continue. Uh they say that there's been, Harold, you're more of a historian than I am, that there no no countries, I mean this the cycle, what is the cycle like 250 years or 350 years that uh a power stays in power. So, you know, the United States has been a world leader, sort of numerous uno in the world for quite some time now.

SPEAKER_02 5:06

We've seen empires come and gone. We've seen the rise and fall of Greece, we've seen the rise and fall of the Persian Empire, the rise and fall of the Roman Empire. Great Britain, it was the sun never shone on the British Empire.

SPEAKER_00 5:19

Never set.

SPEAKER_02 5:20

Set. What did I say? Shone? Oh sorry.

SPEAKER_00 5:22

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 5:22

They knew what I meant. Never set on the British Empire. And maybe it's time that our sun is setting, but it's not gonna go, it shouldn't go without a fight.

SPEAKER_00 5:32

It shouldn't go without a fight, and it shouldn't go in this way. Absolutely. Uh because this is self-inflicted.

SPEAKER_02 5:40

And and this is why we we're, you know, hoping I was trying to figure out a way to meld these two topics, the idea that, you know, the outrage that we're feeling, and the topic of wisdom. And I happened to come across a quote from Harry Truman, and he said, The only thing new in the world is the history you don't know. And it's so apropos. What we're seeing now in this country is not new. We've seen it before. And I know that you've probably heard a lot of parallels to Nazi Germany and the Weimar Republic, and just do your research and you will see exactly what I'm talking about. I don't think I need to go any further.

SPEAKER_00 6:28

Right. And it and and it doesn't take much. So I uh I was I was going to talk about some quote that had been used, and someone I had read, oh yeah, uh it was being used by this administration, and that was used in Nazi Germany. But before I said that on this episode, I said, let me look at this, because you know, on both sides of this situation, a lot of times false information and false narratives and quotes and all of that are provided. So just do a little research. I, you know, I call myself the Google Queen because I Google everything. So I Google the quote, and sure enough, Snopes.com. And if you don't know about Snopes, it's a site that sort of verifies a lot of things, rumors and stuff that you hear, and they found no connection to the quote that was used by the administration. They found no, you know, corollary between that and and uh Nazi Germany. So I'm not repeating it on air. But I think that there are other things that are very clearly related to things that happened in 1930s Germany.

SPEAKER_02 7:53

Actually, to go online, the Weimar Republic, look at Germany, 1920, I think it's probably 23 to about 32 when Hitler came to power. And I think you will find it, you may find it frightening how similar the events are to what's going on today. But but we don't want to like linger in all this heaviness. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Because we're talking about does wisdom come with age? And yeah, again, yeah, it should come with age. You've been around a while, and hopefully, if you've gotten to our age, you've learned something through your experiences.

SPEAKER_00 8:37

Yeah, that that that is that is the hope. Of course, we know that the expression, there's no fool like an old fool didn't come from nowhere, but we hope none of you listening are the old fools. How's that? I think the ideal is and the hope is that everyone, as they grow older, based on whatever your experiences are in life, have learned something from it. And learning how to deal with it, learning what to do and what not to do. And that's wisdom. What was your definition? Didn't you look up a definition of the stuff?

SPEAKER_02 9:14

I sure did. Wisdom. The quality of having experience, knowledge and good judgment, the quality of being wise.

SPEAKER_00 9:24

So all of those things, experience, knowledge, and good judgment. And we know that when we were younger, we didn't we certainly didn't have experience because we hadn't lived long enough. We had some knowledge. Sometimes we thought we knew everything, but we learned very quickly, I think, that we didn't. Well, at least we should have learned.

SPEAKER_02 9:43

I know that for me, you know, and this is something we Hope and I talk about often. I thought we I thought I knew everything. I thought my parents were not in a position to give me advice because quite frankly, I thought I was uh I'm gonna say I thought I was smarter than them. So the advice that they gave me went in one ear and went out the other.

SPEAKER_00 10:05

Right. And I think that may be the case for many of us. In a lot of cases, well, first of all, I think that most kids, most young people are know it-alls, you know, they just think that they're the first ones going through these experiences, and there's no value in listening to old people, you know, tell them about, oh, well, it's not the same as when you were old, when you were young. It's different now, that sort of thing. But as we all grown older, I think most of us realize that things don't change that much, that life experiences are, you know, fall into a pattern, certainly that sometimes it it veers from that, but there's a lot that that we can learn. We can and and it goes both ways because we've talked about on on this podcast in previous episodes, learning things from younger people.

SPEAKER_02 11:03

Right, right. Especially yes, absolutely. You know, I think I think it's the critical aspect here is being open, being willing to acknowledge that you don't know everything.

SPEAKER_00 11:16

And that goes for everyone. That goes for everyone. But but that, even that, comes from wisdom, the the the ability to acknowledge that you don't know everything is a wise you know realization.

SPEAKER_02 11:33

There's a there's a Buddhist saying that if your cup is full, you can't get put anything into it. And basically what it means, the parable just says that if you think you know everything, there's nothing for you to learn. And none of us are in a position where we can't learn anything. But I think that that comes with aging. It comes with wisdom. I shouldn't say aging because there's you don't have to be hopefully you don't have to be old to learn these these things. It'd be I wish that I knew some of the things that I know now. I wish I had known them 40 years ago. Maybe I would not have made some of the mistakes that I did make.

SPEAKER_00 12:15

Yeah, but it's okay as long as you learned from those mistakes.

SPEAKER_02 12:20

I have uh we have a friend of our Hope and I have a friend, and he once said, our parents paved the road for us. All you had to do was paint the yellow lines on the road. You didn't have to create a new path, you didn't have to make a new road. The road was already there. How many of us didn't follow that instruction? We said, oh no, I see the road there, but I'm gonna make my own road. And 30 years later you said, you know what, I should have probably followed that road that they had already paved with.

SPEAKER_00 12:57

And of course, you know, there are exceptions to every rule. There's some people who did pave new roads and were very successful at that. But but I think maybe, maybe they had some special abilities, insight, talents, whatever. But for I think for the majority of us, you know, life experiences don't change. Maybe the settings change, but we all go through certain things. We we all go through the deaths, for example, of people that we love and care about. We all go through being hurt by people. We all go through, I think, feelings of jealousy sometimes. Uh, there's so many things that are are universal. And maybe if we were open to understanding how other people have dealt with those situations, it would make our own lives easier. But we're not always willing to do that. Not always willing to do that.

SPEAKER_02 14:02

So when I look back over Is there a song when I look back over my life? It's a gospel song. Oh, it's a gospel song. Okay. So I look back over my life and I think about what I have learned and when I I think about how as a young person I used to value certain things. I used to value actually valued people's opinion of me more than I valued my own. I was concerned about how I dressed. I was concerned about things that I had, whether it be clothing or jewelry or vehicles or where I lived. And um now I'm I've sort of simplified some of the things. Cars. The car, the most important thing about a car is does it start? I mean, we I'm driving a Jeep that I think is 18. How old is that?

SPEAKER_00 15:04

It's yeah, it's uh 18 years old.

SPEAKER_02 15:06

18 years old. Does it start? Does it have heat? Does it have you know, I was talking to my son the other day.

SPEAKER_00 15:16

It's not 18, is it? No, wait a minute. It was 2008. Oh no, 18. That's what I'm saying.

SPEAKER_02 15:21

Yeah, so I was talking to my son the other day, and I said, there are certain things that I that I require heated seats, remote start, so I could start it from inside the house on a cold day. And um, you know, and then it runs. And it runs. It doesn't have to be the latest car. It doesn't have I I I watch these car commercials where the the monthly payment is more than my mortgage. You know, no.

SPEAKER_01 15:47

No, not more than more than our mortgage. Mortgage mortgage payment, yeah. Are you kidding me? Yeah, car payments like up to a thousand dollars a month.

SPEAKER_00 15:56

But our mortgage payment is more than that. Oh, that's true too.

SPEAKER_02 15:59

Okay, well, half our mortgage. But they're expensive, you know. I mean, obviously, if we don't go back to the days when a car payment was a hundred and hundred and thirty dollars a month, but but nevertheless, you I think everyone gets my idea. You know, these are not important things. What's important? Clothing. Today, for me, it's important that it fits. You know, as when I go shopping for clothing, and that's rare, but when I do, does it have stretch? That's important. Does it have stretch? Does it fit? Uh you know, and and that's it. Well, I mean, it helps to look, you know, it helps to look kind of like I don't want to have a leisure suit. Yeah. I don't even know if they sell those anymore.

SPEAKER_00 16:46

I hope not anyway.

SPEAKER_02 16:47

No, but but but it's you know, I'm just I'm just trying to get across the point that there are different criteria for me. I had initially put some notes down that said my main focus is comfort, fit, and cleanliness. And cleanliness is the last of the three. Yeah, in that order, he said. And I said, really? Right, you know, because if it doesn't A, my favorite shirt or pants, oh, they're not clean. Nobody's gonna get that close to me. Who cares? What about me?

SPEAKER_00 17:16

Well, I know I I don't complain because Harold really is will start a load of laundry before I even think about it. It you know, he's he's good about that. So he put cleanliness as the third point, you know, of three, but it that's not really true for him. He does he does care about cleanliness.

SPEAKER_02 17:35

Right, right. So those of you of his clothes, at least. Yeah. So those of you who run meet us in the street, you know, you don't have to stand stand three feet away. Stand downwind because like, whoa, man.

SPEAKER_00 17:48

No, and um, and for me, I I guess uh, you know, I I guess I was kind of a people pleaser. You know, I grew up as an only child, and only children are always looking for siblings or, you know, those kind of relationship, close relationships, and to get there sometimes is it, you know, you oh, you want to be friends with people, you want to be friends with them, you want people to like you and all of that. I don't really care if you don't, I'm gonna be who I am. I'm not gonna change myself or anybody at this point in time. I'm okay with who I am, I think I'm a decent person. I, you know, I I try to be kind and I try to be polite and I try to consider others, but if you don't like me, that's okay. You know, I I don't have to be liked by everybody. And uh as far as what I wear, yes, I like to look nice. I I I do hope that I will lose the seven pounds that I gained over the holidays, even when I needed to lose 10 pounds before the holidays, so now I'm uh I've got 17 pounds to lose. I I would be very happy if that happened. But you know, if it doesn't, I'm I'm not the heaviest person in the world, and I can camouflage. At least I hope I can. But uh, I I asked Harold when we came up with this idea, what what was the point? What did we want to leave people with on this topic? And I think for me, it's that to think about your wisdom and to think of your your experiences as valuable ones. And if you do get the opportunity to share that wisdom, to share it because maybe you can help help someone over a tough time or prepare someone when they don't even think they need to be prepared for stuff. So share your stories.

SPEAKER_02 19:54

I think a lot of times we don't even realize that younger people are listening to us. And they do take to heart I mean I I'm sure we've all heard this saying that people don't do what you say, but they they watch what you do. And I probably butchered that, but you you know what you know what I mean. They watch what you do and how you live your life. And um people are watching. I I know recently I've had a couple of people come to me and say that something I said stuck with them, and I was surprised because I said that, you know, I didn't know that and I mean I may have rem I remember saying it, but I didn't think it would have such an impact on the lives of other people. And so often you don't recognize how important what you say is to someone else.

SPEAKER_00 20:52

So Yeah, so what so watch what you say because sometimes it could be the complete opposite. You could say something very negative to someone that really is not helpful, could be damaging to people. So be kind in what you say, do it with uh with all good intentions, and and hopefully the the younger people in our lives and and even some of the older people that we come in contact with, because as I think we s may have said earlier, and certainly in earlier podcasts, just because you're older doesn't mean you stop learning and stop developing and stop you know progressing on whatever, you know, I think the Buddhist said the road to enlightenment or something like that. Uh I'm not that familiar with Buddhist philosophy. But I think that regardless if if you know uh you know most religions are trying to get us to evolve into to where we're using all that we were given in a positive way and to leave a positive mark on on the earth when you know when we go.

SPEAKER_02 22:07

I think that uh we pretty much said as much as we can say on this topic. Yes. I know hopefully you folks I can hear somebody snoring in the background. So you can wake up now.

SPEAKER_00 22:22

Uh well, I hope you had a nice nap. See, we did something good for you today. We put you to sleep. But I I hope you don't sleep on the kinds of things, the things we talked about earlier, uh, because it's so critical. And we as older people still have a role. We do have a role in what the future of our nation is going to be. And that is to support and encourage. We may not be able to get out there and protest and march down the streets, but but maybe there's an organization that you can send money to. Or or maybe it's just sharing information. You know, some of our are you know, young they're working, they don't have time, you know, for the news and investigating and all of that. Maybe you can do that and sort of give them a synopsis of what's happening and and you're a trusted source in their life, so they'll believe you.

SPEAKER_02 23:18

Do what you can.

SPEAKER_00 23:19

Do what you can, please, please. We it it I I've never felt I I've never felt less optimistic because it's a very scary place. It's a very scary place that I feel that we're in. And as we said in our last podcast, we've been through a lot of things in our lives.

SPEAKER_02 23:39

Yes, we have.

SPEAKER_00 23:40

We have been through a lot of upheavals in this country, but I always felt that we were um moving forward. It might have been, you know, a quarter of an inch at a time, but I really feel like we're running in reverse now.

SPEAKER_02 23:57

We'll get through this. We'll get through this.

SPEAKER_00 23:59

I see, yeah, but when and that what cost?

SPEAKER_02 24:03

Yeah, yeah. Well, well, right. I mean, okay, yes, you're right.

SPEAKER_00 24:08

I think I think right over might it always wins out, but it just it might be a longer road than than that we want it to be.

SPEAKER_02 24:17

Remember to follow us wherever you listen to podcasts. You can send us a note at you still have time podcast at gmail.com. You can leave us a voicemail message at speakpike.com. And you could leave us a text message if you just go into our show notes. I think there's a link to so that you would be able to send us a text message. Please give us your feedback. We look forward to it. We do, we really want to hear from you. Right. We our goal is to continue to have this conversation, and we want to know what you think. So reach out to us any way you can. Yes, what's important to you?

SPEAKER_00 25:00

Let us know. And thank you. Thank you for listening. And what do we always say, Hope? Just remember, you still have time. Take care. Take care. See you soon.