The Upside of Maturity

There's a rarely discussed upside of middle age, and that's the ability to process new-- and possibly very divergent-- trends of thought simply and effectively into your own way of thinking, without having to stop too much and rethink everything. As a young student of philosophy, it took me years to plumb the ideas and importance of Plato, and nearly a decade to unravel Aristotle. With age, I find it's easier to grasp a new thinker, incorporate the new ideas into my own world view, and move on. This is a blessing.
New ideas are like plentiful vegetables in the autumn-- able to dramatically enhance the experienced chef's menu without reducing the quality of his meal.

Witness one of France's philosophical superstars, Bernard-Henri Lévy. Bold, brilliant, debonair, middle-aged. Introduced to the thought of Monsieur Botul, an obscure European philosopher of the middle of the last century, Lévy found some common themes with his own thought, and expounded and enlarged on the ideas of his predecessor. Bernard-Henri Lévy, found, dare I say, common ground with Botulism? Quoi?