In search of a critical eye, intellectual vigor, and humility ...

While watching college football yesterday, I heard that Kareem Abdul-Jabbar had been hospitalized following a fall in which he broke a hip. Let's hope the 76 year old basketball great has good doctors and manages a speedy recovery.

I'd been planning to post one of Abdul-Jabbar's homilies soon enough. Why not do it today? 

"A man who views the world the same at fifty as he did at twenty has wasted thirty years of his life." -- Muhammad Ali, The Greatest

Sometimes when I look back on some of the ideas I had when I was twenty, and how arrogantly certain I was of being right, I wish I could hop in a time machine, go back to UCLA, and kick my smug, twenty-year-old ass. But most of the time, I just smile when I think back because I know that being wrong is part of the process of getting it right.

I wasn’t wrong about everything. The Vietnam War was bad. As the Pentagon Papers proved, President Lyndon Johnson lied to the American public as well as to Congress about what was really going on there. I wasn’t wrong about the treatment of Blacks in America and the need for equal treatment and opportunities.

The real issue isn’t which specific ideologies, philosophies, or politics have changed, but whether one’s ability to recognize their own weaknesses in forming opinions and stubbornness in keeping them, despite evidence to the contrary, has grown. With age can come a belief that you are suddenly imbued with supernatural wisdom. For some, that’s just an illusion that allows them to not challenge their opinions—and to rebuff others’ disagreements. There’s a difference between being resolved and being stubborn. ...

As an aside, here’s something you should learn as you grow older: Stop using “man” when referring to humankind (as ... Ali’s quote ... [does]). That’s not being woke, it’s being accurate. Using man is disrespectful and insisting to use it regardless proves you haven’t learned anything in the past 30 years.

Just to piggyback off Ali’s quote, anyone who thinks the same at 70 as they did at 50 hasn’t been paying attention. This is not about changing political sides or taste in music or playing pickleball instead of tennis. It’s being aware that the world is in a constant state of flux. Greek philosopher Heraclitus made this point best: “No man ever steps in the same river twice, for it's not the same river and he's not the same man.” (There’s that “man” again.)

Nothing remains the same and so we must approach each new idea or opinion with the same critical eye, intellectual vigor, and humility as we did in our youth. We must be willing to be wrong, yet also willing to be proven wrong. The rocky treacherous path to being right is the one thing that doesn’t change. The willingness to walk that path is what gives our beliefs value.

It isn't easy to avoid becoming stuck. Engagement with the world's joys and pains helps, if we can endure them. Perhaps a wisdom in aging is to discern just how much immersion in the flow of life we can bear and yet hold a steady course despite changes and chances.

Erudite Partner is an ethicist; from her I've learned that what makes for an ethical life is usually a product of what habits we form and encourage in ourselves. Courage always buttresses all other desirable habits which shape our changes.

Let's wish Kareem all good courage in his physical challenges.

Kareem in hospital