But self-criticism and self-irony are also ingredients of wisdom and remain essential as long as they do not degenerate to sarcasm or to the relativism of an elusive comfort zone where every “point of view” would be equally true or untrue. This does not mean that we have a tool to measure the “wisdom” of statements, or that we can develop such a tool without silently presupposing an instrumental understanding of wisdom. The challenge is rather to find an approach that can be seen as meaningful by persons who find themselves in puzzling or difficult situations where effective solutions are not available and good answers hard to find.
A re-actualization of the connection between wisdom and aging also requires paying more attention to the subtle ways in which experiences are processed as people grow older. For instance, when an older person displays fewer activities in the public sphere, her world is said to get “smaller.” The contrast of large versus small may be grossly inadequate to understand the changes that actually occur. Even in a “smaller” world, events may take on a new intensity as important details that were not noticed before (for instance, because “there was no time”), may come to life and deepen the world one lives in. This may also entail that certain questions about the meaning of one’s life or life “as such” become more important, whereas they hardly came to the foreground before.
Jan Baars, Aging and the Art of Living 중에서