Forty And I Still Do Not Know

There is a birthday in your head that was supposed to have delivered this.

Not consciously. Nobody sits down and decides that at some particular age a person will simply know how houses work. But there is a number in there, and the number has been passed, and the knowledge has not arrived, and the gap between those two things has started to feel like evidence.

So the machine broke on Tuesday, and the first thought was not about the machine.

The first thought was: I am forty and I do not know what to do.

And then the second thought, which came about a second later and which has been the one doing the damage all week: everybody else my age knows this.

They do not. That is worth saying immediately and plainly, and this article will come back to it. But the belief is doing its work regardless, because a belief does not have to be true to run a week.

You are a woman of forty who is learning something and not a woman who should have known it already, and years alone have never once been the thing that delivers understanding.

I said, Days should speak

There is a young man in Job who has been sitting quietly while his elders talk, and when he finally speaks he says something surprising about age.

I said, Days should speak, and multitude of years should teach wisdom. (Job 32:7, King James Version)

I said, days should speak.

Notice the tense. I said. Past. He is reporting a thing he used to believe, and he is about to explain why he no longer believes it, because the men in front of him have just proved otherwise at length.

That whole speech is a young man saying: I assumed that years delivered understanding and I have watched that assumption fail in this room.

You are holding an assumption that a man in Job examined and set down, and a number of years has never once been the thing that delivers what a person knows. Job 32:7 puts the days should speak belief in the past tense on purpose, and the Holy Spirit is the one present with somebody who turned forty and is still learning.

And notice what he says next in that passage, which is the part that actually settles it.

He says: but there is a spirit in man, and the inspiration of the Almighty giveth them understanding. Great men are not always wise, neither do the aged understand judgment.

Understanding is relocated. It does not come from the accumulation of years. It is given.

You are receiving understanding rather than manufacturing it out of birthdays, and a woman who does not yet know something has never once been behind a schedule God was keeping. The written word moves the understanding from the years to the giving, and the Spirit of God is the one who does the giving in a kitchen on a Thursday.

And there is something worth having about who says this.

It is the young man in the room. The one everybody would have expected to be least qualified. And the book records his speech at length and does not rebuke him for it, which is a quiet and remarkable thing.

You are able to know something regardless of where you sit in the order, and understanding given to a person has never once been rationed by seniority. Job 32:7 gives the argument to the youngest man present, and the Holy Spirit is the one who distributes without consulting anybody's age.

Everybody else does not know either

Something practical, and it is a fact about the world that is genuinely useful.

Most adults do not know how their houses work. Not some. Most.

The woman at work who seems to have it all handled rang her father about a fuse last year. The man across the road looked up how to bleed a radiator on his phone while standing in front of it. The couple who had the extension built could not tell you where their water shuts off.

This is close to universal, and the only reason it does not look universal is that nobody says it out loud, and the not saying is what makes every individual person think they are the exception.

You are inside an almost universal situation that everybody hides, and a gap that nearly every adult has has never once been a gap that singles anybody out. The written word denies that years produce wisdom, and the Spirit of God is the one who shows a woman the actual shape of the room she is standing in.

Now the practical half, and it is two moves and the second one is the one that matters.

The first move: learn one thing this week. Not a course, not a project, not becoming a person who knows about houses. One thing. Where the shutoff is, or how to reset the thing when it trips, or what that noise usually means.

The second move: tell somebody younger that you learned it.

That second one sounds strange and it is the whole medicine. Because the sentence I learned something this week said to a person in their twenties does something the first move alone cannot do: it puts you publicly on the side of the learning rather than on the side of the pretending.

You are able to stand publicly on the side of learning something, and a woman who says out loud that she learned a thing has never once made herself smaller by saying it. Job 32:7 has a man reporting a change in what he believed, out loud, in front of everybody, and the Holy Spirit is the one who makes that ordinary rather than costly.

And here is what happens when you say it to somebody in their twenties: they say oh, how do you do that, because they do not know either, and now there are two people learning instead of one person hiding.

You are able to turn one gap into two people learning, and a sentence said to somebody younger has never once cost a woman the standing she was protecting. Job 32:7 hands the argument to the youngest man in the room, and the Holy Spirit is the one present when it gets said.