The Parable of the Old Fish
I would like to live in a community where Wisdom of the Elders is valued by up-and-comers. What more flattering, and satisfying, experience might an Elder imagine than being asked: Share with me what you’ve learned the past three decades.
Rather than valuing Elder Wisdom, it seems to me there are too many instances today where it is disregarded entirely, even sneered at, as if it were an affliction and not a virtue. I was of that attitude many years ago. Actually, it wasn’t so much I sneered at Elder Wisdom as I had become contemptuous of Authority. I was deeply resentful of individuals who thought they deserved respect simply because of their Office.
Indeed, if asked, this would be a bit of Wisdom I’d pass on to posterity, Withhold respect for any person until they’ve earned it.
If you ask me the worst disrespect for Elder Wisdom is the kind packaged with condescension. Nothing worse than some Boy full up on his own self-appraisal telling you, You got It wrong Old Man. Oh, is that so? Well, here, have a slice of Humble Pie, Boy: I was writing code for an A/D controller on a DEC PDP-11 when you were still messing your drawers.
You see, once upon a time there was an old fish. Each and every summer the old fish would join the other fish at the mouth of the river, and when the tide swung hard he’d start upstream along with them, but only so far as the rush of water would propel him. When the tail force of the tide equaled the head force of the river, the old fish sought refuge inside an eddy of a cut bank, while the others fought their way upstream. There he’d wait for the next pulse of fish to come by on the next tide. When they did, he’d dart from the cut bank and pull in behind them, swimming in their draft until he could no longer hold their pace. Then he would stop and hold up in another pool of lazy water to regain his strength. On and on this went for weeks, until, eventually, the river lost its force, began to meander and become shallower. Here, after commingling their seed among the stones of the river bed, the other fish began to transmogrify into frightful forms, both in color and shape.
What could the old fish do but swim among the carnage. He tried to caution the new fish arriving each day but to no avail. They ignored his warnings, disregarded his concerns, pushed passed him like zombie fish hastening their doom. Eventually, new fish stopped arriving, and like all the other years the old fish gave up and swam slowly downstream, back to the ocean.
One year, when the old fish had made it back to the ocean, he came upon a young fish who was late to move up the river. Surely, the old fish thought, he could persuade a single fish to avoid the fate that awaited him, if only he would listen to the wisdom of the old fish. Instead, the young fish became belligerent and challenged the old fish to a fight, which the old fish lost. His remains washed up on the beach. To this day there has never been another old fish like him.
