The political philosopher Ibn Zafar, in his masterful treatise Consolation for the Ruler During the Hostility of his Subjects, states as follows:

It was said that no one is to be pitied more than ministers serving underage monarchs or old men in love with maidens.  It is hard for the young to advance from the blindness of passion to the straight path of counsel, for two reasons:  first, because their desires exercise a despotic power over them; second, because experience has not yet settled in to control their energies and teach them to resist passion’s influence, as do the wise.  The reason why anger and desire have so much power over the mind, is because they accompany it from the hour of birth.  This is not the case with understanding, which is bestowed upon the mind at a later period. [Trans. by J. Kechichian & R. Dekmejian] 

No one can doubt that certain kinds of knowledge are comprehended only with the passage of time; and before that minimum period has elapsed, wisdom finds neither residence nor resonance in the mind.  It may be preached and discussed, but it will not be truly understood.  What the ears are not ready to hear will not be heard.  This is the operative principle that explains why our tastes and interests change with the passage of years:  it is because we literally become different people at different points in our lives.  You are not the same person you were ten years ago, and neither am I.  You will not be the same person ten years hence. 

We often notice that books, films, or other diversions which once repelled us, now hold our interest; and activities or individuals that we once found agreeable, no longer occupy a place in our hearts.  These changes sometimes happen gradually, and at other times with startling rapidity.  But the reason why these changes in taste or perspective happen is because our intervening experiences have created for us new minds and new bodies.  You do not feel you are a different person from what you were ten years ago, because your present consciousness cannot reoccupy and understand your earlier mind.  But I can assure you that you are different.  Anyone who doubts this needs only to look at a ten-year-old photograph of himself, or read something he wrote ten years ago.  It may be useful, after the passage of some years, to revisit books, films, or even individuals you once liked or disliked.  A re-hearing of closed cases often reveals new judicial evidence.  You may very well discover that your assessments of these things have changed completely.         

Yet even though certain types of wisdom will not be fully grasped by the young, we should still endeavor to expose them to it.  Truths need to be presented in different ways at different stages of human development.  This is because some residue of wisdom, however slight it may be, will imprint itself on the uncomprehending mind, to be recalled at some future date by a more mature and seasoned consciousness.  The concept will be introduced into the mind and remains there, even if it has not yet been linked to hard experience. I suppose a corollary to these points is an idea that greatly impressed me from Cicero’s On the Nature of the Gods: this idea that “no one ever attributed earned virtue to a god.” I had never really noticed this truth before. A man will credit his riches, his success, and even his misfortunes to a divine source, but you will never hear a man credit his hard-earned wisdom to a divinity. For his knows, in the marrow of his bones, that he himself earned it.  

This is why, in matters of learning and wisdom, the virtue of patience is so essential.  Verdicts vary with time.  We should not be too eager to judge; what you once thought to be fixed with certainty, you may one day repudiate with chagrin. Information you believe to be of little use, may in fact prove to be priceless at some future date.  Forbearance, foresight, and courage are the strands that form the single cord of patience:  forbearance, the virtue that discourages us from being too quick to judge; foresight, the quality that gives us the vision to know the future will be different from today; and courage, the virtue that gives us the strength to endure until circumstances change.  Only time begets wisdom, and we must pay our tuition in years. 

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Read more on this and related topics in the new collection of essays, Centuries.