In Praise of the Backbone That Only Experience Builds
There is a softness that comes with youth, a necessary openness, a willingness to take things in without yet having the framework to evaluate every claim or challenge every assumption. The young bull is impressive. Its strength is visible. Its energy commands attention. It carries the promise of what might become.
The older bull is impressive in a different way. Its strength is joined to wisdom earned through experience, judgment refined through years of living, and confidence grounded in reality rather than possibility. The older bull carries the knowledge that comes from seasons endured, challenges faced, mistakes survived, and lessons learned. It has spent enough time in the field to understand what the field requires.
What the Proverb Honours
Di olda di bull, di stiffer di horn.
In Jamaican farming culture, the bull was among the most powerful animals in the yard. Its horns were its most distinctive feature, the tools of its authority. The proverb reminds us that those horns grow harder with time. Age strengthens them.
This proverb speaks against the assumption that value is found primarily in youth and novelty. It reminds us that age concentrates power, experience deepens wisdom, and time strengthens character. The years shape a person into someone more fully themselves.
There is a deep dignity in this image. The age of the older bull is part of its authority. Every season survived, every challenge endured, and every lesson learned has added to the strength it carries.
In the Home: The Authority That Age Earns and the Respect It Is Owed
Jamaican family culture has traditionally held elders in a particular kind of regard that is both cultural and practical. The older person in the room has often walked roads the younger person has yet to travel. Their perspective is shaped by experiences that only time can provide.
Experience creates a depth of understanding that enriches families and communities. Raising children, caring for aging parents, recovering from setbacks, celebrating victories, and learning from mistakes all leave their mark. Those experiences become a source of wisdom that benefits everyone around them.
The older bull in the family is the grandmother whose opinion carries weight because of the life she has lived. It is the grandfather whose words command attention because they emerge from years of observation and reflection. Their horns have stiffened. Their experience has become a resource for the family and a source of stability in uncertain moments.
In Relationships: The Confidence That Replaces Performance
In younger relationships and in the earlier stages of relationships, people often spend considerable energy managing impressions. They work hard to appear attractive, capable, interesting, successful, or worthy of affection. Much of that effort comes from uncertainty about how they will be received.
With time, healthy relationships create something deeper. People experience the freedom of being fully known and fully accepted. They become more comfortable with themselves and more trusting of the relationship. They discover the ease that comes from authenticity.
This is another example of the older bull’s stiff horn. It reflects the quiet confidence of a person who knows themselves well, trusts their judgment, and lives comfortably within that knowledge.
In your own life, notice the places where your confidence has deepened through experience. Notice where you have developed greater clarity about your values, your strengths, and your place in the world. Notice where you have become more willing to speak honestly and stand firmly in what you know. That is your horn stiffening. It is worth honouring.
At Work: Experience as a Non-Negotiable Asset
The professional world has a complicated relationship with age and experience. Organisations value innovation, fresh thinking, and adaptability. They also depend upon judgment, perspective, and wisdom. The strongest organisations understand the importance of both.
The young bull contributes energy, enthusiasm, and fresh possibilities. The older bull contributes tested judgment. It brings the ability to remain calm during challenges that resemble storms already weathered. It offers perspective about what matters, what requires immediate attention, and what can be handled with patience. It brings credibility that comes from experience and insight that develops through years of practice.
If you are the older bull in your organisation, embrace the value you bring. Your experience provides perspective, steadiness, and wisdom that strengthen the people around you. The stiff horn of the older bull represents exactly the kind of leadership many organisations need.
Honouring Your Own Earned Resilience
Take some time this week to reflect on what you have survived, what you have learned, and what you know now that you could only have learned by living through it.
Approach this reflection with honesty and appreciation. Consider the challenges that stretched you, the mistakes that taught you, the disappointments that refined you, and the successes that strengthened your confidence.
Your experience represents the accumulated richness of a life fully lived. The scars, the recalibrations, the insights, the wisdom, and the perspective you carry today have all contributed to who you have become.
Many people compare themselves to younger versions of themselves. A more useful comparison is to recognise the qualities that time has developed: resilience, perspective, judgment, patience, and clarity.
The older bull carries the strength of experience. Its power comes from everything it has learned along the way. There is wisdom in recognizing that truth and allowing it to shape the way you move through the world.
From the Bookshelf
Maya Angelou’s I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings is the autobiography of a woman whose horn stiffened through extraordinary hardship and emerged with remarkable wisdom, courage, and clarity. It is essential reading for anyone reflecting on what experience can build over time.
Mary Oliver’s collected poems offer a contemplative exploration of attention, presence, and the deepening that comes with age. Her later work especially reflects the perspective of someone who has spent a lifetime learning how to see clearly.
Olive Senior’s Gardening in the Tropics moves between the Caribbean and the wider world with the confidence of a writer who understands both deeply. Her voice carries the authority of observation, experience, and insight. It is a wonderful literary example of the older bull at work.
A Closing Thought
You are not the same person you were at twenty-five or thirty-five or forty-five. The years have shaped you. They have added wisdom, steadiness, perspective, and self-understanding.
Experience offers gifts that unfold gradually over time. Each season contributes something valuable to who you become. The challenges, opportunities, relationships, successes, and failures all participate in that shaping.
The horn stiffens. It reflects the growth that comes from living, learning, and embracing life’s lessons. It carries the marks of experience and the wisdom earned from paying attention to what life teaches.
Where have you grown more certain, more grounded, and more fully yourself over time? How are you allowing that hard-earned wisdom to shape the way you carry yourself today?
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