Retrospection

[Sandra Davies]

It’s a little late to realise it, but you don’t pick up experience with age.   Not by osmosis.    Not from seeing what your children do.

And it’s a shock to realise that I am just as tongue-tied, as naive, as when I was a teenager.  

Abut some things.

And it’s far too late to think I’ve a hope in hell of experiencing those things now.

[Sandra Davies]

@ Mike - so very, very true.

Thank you all.

[Other]

Naivete is just a  pit stop and those shimmering trepidations  just prove that your motor is still humming.  From what I see, you're good to go.  

[Mike Handley]

Amen, S. With any luck, we'll reincarnate and explore all those roads untaken, even if we're quite happy to wind up in the same place.

[Diana E. Backhouse]

Sandra, I have many gaps in my life experiences. I'm not at all sure that I would want to fill most of them now.

[Sandra Davies]

Gita - one of the terrors of writing fiction is writing about what you know sweet FA about and hope no-one spots the humungous great holes in your knowledge and experience.   My fictional characters are to a large extent 'what if' figures and the only way I can imbue them with polish, dash etc. and get over those terrors is to blithely assume everyone else has terrors/gaps of their own.   Most of the time I can convince myself.

As for 'flirting' - what's that?  ;)

[Gita]

Yet you create characters in fiction who have tremendous polish and  dash, who run art galleries and accept the attentions of attractive others.

So it's not that you are naive -- which implies a lack of information -- but that you haven't practiced what you know 'out loud.'   A dear male friend once told me: "there are two types of flirting. Flirting for keeps and flirting to keep in practice."

[Sandra Davies]

Thanks Teresa - but that's the thing - most of the time nowadays I'm in situations where I am comfortable (and never more so than with 6S writing folk)   It's when I am suddenly returned to a situation I have no experience of - because what I did missed out on that particular character-development - and realise thatI am no more capable of answering/speaking/acting with any more confidence than I did when I was sixteen under those circumstances that I get caught out;  it's too late to catch up now.

Regret is a part of the reaction, and inevitable, since none of us can do everything, but I've just been thinking along those lines lately.

[Teresa]

I'm not so sure about you being naive.  And you're not tongue-tied on paper/pixel.  You think long and deep.  You may hesitate in person while your tongue is still waiting for the gold leaf to spill down from your mind, while other people quickly dump their witty counterfeit.  I trust the shy ones, the quiet introspective ones.  I know you're wise.  Wise doesn't mix with naive.  There's probably a better word, more accurate.  Don't sell yourself short.   

[bolton carley]

there are worse things than naivety.  but you tongue-tied? :)  i like the briefness of this that still has impact.  and so true.

[Diana E. Backhouse]

I'm with you on this one, Sandra.