In my 50s I realized that people have to discover some things on their own and that unless something really needs to be said to achieve something that I consider important, it is OK to say nothing and let people blunder through life.
I've been too busy blundering through life to read "The View from 80" but my father told me (if memory still serves) that Cowley says that, at 80, one is comfortable watching all the younger people earnestly striving and letting them do so.
Somewhere in Marcus Aurelius, he points out that even when you're the emperor of Rome, you are still surrounded by the barely competent and barely -ept, so it's better to work with the grain of human nature, and learn how to accomplish things anyway, with grace and good cheer, despite the eternal imperfection of the substrate.
-Dave
