Here’s a remarkable passage from David Guterson’s novel, Snow Falling on Cedars (1994):

He had indeed achieved a kind of wisdom—if you wanted to call it that—though at the same time he knew that most elderly people were not wise at all but only wore a thin veneer of cheap wisdom as a sort of armor against the world. Anyway, the kind of wisdom younger people sought from old age was not to be acquired in this life no matter how many years they lived. He wished he could tell them this without inviting their mockery or pity.