Saturday 8 January 2011

Optimum Age?

This post originates from a paragraph in this post, written by Dr Grumble. What is the best age? Twenties, thirties, forties? With age comes wisdom, or from my experience cynicism. Don’t get me wrong though, I know a lot of older people out there who are optimistic and can still past on their cumulative knowledge to the younger generation.

So when will I peak? Physically I’m in my prime, playing sports has never been easier for me. At school I was terrible at PE. But Karate changed that.

Mentally? Certainly I am no cleverer then what I was during my A-levels, but I am certainly better at working, am more disciplined and organised with myself.

Life experience? Would say I’m getting there. Compared to other students, being a medic means you are generally exposed to more of life’s ups and downs then other courses. But I still struggle to adapt to new placements, situations, etc, some of the time. Assuming you get better as you get older.

3 comments:

  1. I am with you 100% on the life experience thing. I struggle to adapt to very new environments aswell. Placements have been somewhat a struggle. Lets HOPE to god we get better as we get older, I think we probably will. If we don't then I'm sure we'll adapt to making it seem like we cope, as others probably do.

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  2. So far things haven't got better or worse for me, purely through age, they've just got different :-)

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  3. "What is the best age?"

    How long is a piece of string?

    Best for studying medicine is, perhaps, your age, although 'a few' will still do it well a bit later in life. Best for doing sport is, perhaps, when your body is most youthful, although 'a few' will still reach the top for longer than normal. Best age for marriage is while youthful too but many now marry very late in life either for the first time or for companionship in well advanced age. Same for tarting a business, for example, Captain Saunders started his Kentucky fried chicken when he was in his 60s and had never embarked on a business before. Optimum age for wisdom? Perhaps the older you get, the wiser you 'should' become because of your pool of accumulated experiences, but that doesn't work all the time either, you only need to look around you to see how many fools are well into their old age, it's because they don't learn from their experiences.

    The moral is; when you have goals, never stop trying, but be prepared to win some and lose some, which brings us to ...

    'Cynical', which comes when there is lack of 'acceptance' of win some, lose some. But acceptance and ambition do not really clash unless you allow them to, meaning that sometimes the goal one might follow may actually be a mirage, hence acceptance helps you to change direction and succeed elsewhere, or elsewhere ... so long as you keep trying ... that's how to avoid, by a great margin, cynicism. :-)

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