What makes one person wiser than another? Once, in kindergarten, my friends and I, all about five years old, were faced with a difficult problem. As we had been going about our normal play,,an unexplained hole had opened up in our worldview. Rushing towards our teacher, Petri, we asked, “what makes a person wise?” After considering this for a moment, he said that a person becomes wiser the more times he’s been around the sun. Wisdom develops in the human brain as this circular motion continues, he said, and usually the older a person is, the more time they’ve had to rotate through different recurring patterns in life and in the natural world. So it was all about circles, that’s why parents are usually wiser than children. We were entranced by this information. Rushing out into the yard, my friends and I spread our arms out wide and started spinning, and we continued spinning for hours believing that we were doing ourselves a great service. The more circles we turned the wiser we were getting. Now, almost 20 years later, I’ve learned that Petri was actually right. The more time a person has spent looking around and seeing things from different perspectives during their life, the wiser they’re likely to be. Whenever someone accuses me of being wise, I say that the fault is in my early childhood education and those hours of spinning.

There was also a second day when we found another hole in our view of the world. We didn’t know why people die. This time, Petri said that people have blood inside them, and if the blood runs out the person can’t stay alive anymore. Now, we didn’t know that human body’s always making new blood, so when I fell playing outside and scraped my knee, I froze in terror when I realised that precious blood was leaking out of me. I thought I was losing years of my life. The next time someone reminded me to be more careful, I knew that the adults just didn’t want me to die prematurely from blood loss. Petri was wrong this time, but so was I. We should never be afraid of small accidents and injuries because we learn from our mistakes. Sometimes, people who experience setbacks and disappointments just get stronger. And sometimes, it’s the people who have to do the most catching up who go the farthest.

Exertion doesn’t weaken the heart, it strengthens it. The skills of the future can not be taught from teacher to students like multiplication tables or grammar. It’s hard to make multiple choice questions about courage, or to assign points to a person's curiosity, even though these are very important skills. Many of the skills we will need in the future are learned through trial and error. Sometimes, you have to change your assumptions. And sometimes, you fail spectacularly. It’s frustrating that recess is more important than class time for developing many skills, and that after-hours or after-hour gatherings are frequently more useful than team meetings. We’re in the midst of an unprecedented period of technological development, and we need lifelong learning, at home, at work, at school. And we can’t be sure what skills the future will demand of us, although expert predictions can provide some directions. But if I was in charge I would put a best before date on all diplomas and certificates. At least one thing is clear, we will be required to continue to adapt to a constantly evolving world.