Whenever I can’t figure out the latest technology, I try to find a twelve-year-old to tell me what to do. Yes, the world is a bit upside down. Children are teaching adults how to survive in this age of technology. It can cause us to think we have nothing to teach our grandchildren.
Maybe you don’t know how to play the latest video game. Perhaps your smartphone makes you look stupid. Yes, your nine-year-old granddaughter can film a video and edit it. She may soon even be able to command a robot to make her bed. However, as much as she understands technology (even if she can’t yet spell the word), she doesn’t understand much about the meaning of life.
The good news is you do. You understand what love and encouragement can do. You know why one shouldn’t lie and why you should make your bed. You have survived a lot. She hasn’t even survived her teens.
She likely lives in a puppy-dog world that chases its tail. Youth are easily drawn to the new, exciting, eye-catching, and famous. So were we. We also grew up in a world oriented to the secular, to wealth, to fame, and to success. Maybe our movies did not contain as much revenge justice, high body counts, explosions, and superficial sex. Perhaps we saw more movies that emphasized the importance of ordinary self-sacrificing love and forgiving those who did you wrong, but we did chase our tails as well.
Over time we gained wisdom. Wisdom is the ability to discern what is most important, why it is important, and what it demands in response. There is a big difference between wisdom and technological knowledge. You have an abundance of the first. Better technology can’t replace what you have: love, courage, patience, long-suffering, laughing, and crying. You understand the deeper, more meaningful things of life.
Our “older” values actually can sell well to youth. Proven, right, true, tested, lasting—these are wisdom-based values. Grandpa and Grandma have “lasted.” Youth see that and ask, “Can I?” No, they don’t want to be old. Not yet. But they see that you can offer what the hottest singer and the coolest actor cannot.
Wisdom still works when excitement fails.
Puppies do grow up and stop chasing their tails.
This article was adapted from the book, The Strategic Grandparent, by Michael Shaughnessy. You can buy it online here.
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