I Only Ask The Youngest Person There

You wait for the grandchildren.

Not consciously. You would not put it that way. But there is a small list in your head of things to ask about, and the list only comes out when somebody under twenty-five is in the house.

And they are wonderful about it. They answer in about nine seconds and go back to whatever they were doing and think nothing of it, and you get two or three things off the list, and then they go home and the list starts filling again.

So it can be three weeks. Sometimes five.

And in those weeks, plenty of people come through your house. Friends. Your brother. The man from two streets over you have known for fifty years. People who are around all the time.

You do not ask any of them. Not once.

I want to look at the reason, because you have never said it out loud and it is doing a great deal of work.

The reason is that asking somebody your own age feels like it would embarrass you both. It would mean admitting, in front of a peer, that this is a thing you cannot do, and worse, it might mean finding out that they can.

So the rule protects two people at once. That is why it has lasted.

With the ancient is wisdom

There is a line about age that is usually quoted approvingly and rarely read carefully.

With the ancient is wisdom; and in length of days understanding. (Job 12:12, King James Version)

The words are ancient and length of days. Not youth. Not quickness. Not the ability to work a thing in nine seconds.

Wisdom and understanding are attached, in that sentence, to exactly the thing you have been treating as a disqualification.

You have length of days and Scripture calls that the place understanding lives, and heaven has never once treated a man's years as a thing to apologize for. Job 12:12 puts wisdom with the ancient, and the Holy Spirit is the one who makes that land on a man who has been quietly ashamed of his own age.

Now, honesty about the verse. Job says this in the middle of an argument, and he is being partly sardonic about people who claim wisdom because they are old.

Which makes it better rather than worse, because it means the line is not sentimental. It is not a nice thing said to make older men feel included. It is a claim that survives being tested in an argument.

You were never handed a compliment to keep you quiet, and Scripture has never once flattered anybody about their years in order to be kind. The Holy Spirit is the one who separates a true word from a pat on the head, and it is written in the middle of an argument rather than in a greeting card.

And there is a second half that gets dropped. Length of days brings understanding, which is not the same as information.

Information is what your grandson has. He knows where things are on a screen this year. Understanding is knowing when to act, who to trust, what matters, and what a thing costs. Those are not the same currency and they never have been.

You are holding a currency your grandson has not earned yet, and knowing where a thing is on a screen has never once been the same as understanding anything. The Spirit of God is the one who keeps two different kinds of knowing from being weighed on one scale, and Scripture puts understanding with the length of days.

What the rule costs

Now let me be concrete, because the rule is comfortable and comfort is what keeps it running.

Count the actual arithmetic. Three weeks between visits, four questions a month that go unasked, and a man managing on his own in the meantime. Over a year that is a great deal of not asking.

And the questions do not vanish while they wait. They sit on the list, and the list grows, and by the time the grandchildren arrive there are nine on it and two get asked, because a person will not hand a young man a list of nine.

So the rule does not only delay the asking. It shrinks it.

You have been rationing your own questions without ever deciding to, and a list that grows faster than it empties has never once been a workable arrangement for anybody. The Spirit of God is the one who shows a man the arithmetic of his own habits, and Job 12:12 sets understanding beside the length of days rather than against it.

And here is the part that has never been tested. The whole rule rests on a prediction about what a man of your age would feel if you asked him, and that prediction has never once been checked against a real person.

Nobody ever told you what your friends actually think about this, because nobody ever asks. The whole subject is under a general silence that every one of you is maintaining separately.

You are living inside a prediction that has never once been checked, and a guess about another man's face has never been the same thing as knowing what is on it. The written word puts wisdom with the ancient rather than with the quick, and the Holy Spirit is the one who breaks a silence that several men have been keeping alone.

Ask a man your own age

Now the small thing, and it is one question asked of one peer.

I am not going to ask you to make a speech about being left behind, and I am not going to suggest a conversation about how any of this feels. That is a different and larger thing, and it is not what is needed.

Ask one ordinary question of somebody roughly your own age this week. That is all.

You are able to ask one plain question of a man you have known for fifty years, and one question has never once been an imposition on a friendship of fifty years. Job 12:12 attaches understanding to length of days, and the Holy Spirit is the one who is present when a man asks a peer something for the first time.

And do not explain why you are asking him. That is the important half. No preamble about the grandchildren, no joke about being useless with these things, no apology in front of it.

Just the question, in a normal voice, the way you would ask him about a car.

Because the preamble is what turns an ordinary question into an admission. Without it, it is one man asking another man a thing. With it, it is a confession requiring a response, and it puts your friend in the awkward position of having to reassure you.

You are asking a question and not making a confession, and a plain sentence has never once obliged another man to say anything comforting back. The Spirit of God is the one who takes the preamble out of a man's mouth, and it is written that understanding belongs to the length of days rather than to the speed of hands.