Contending with traditions is more difficult than we’d like to admit.

The people who came before us, having figured something out, distilled for us what it is we need to do to reap certain benefits. That’s what a tradition is. It’s a way of saying, “Do this and good things will happen. When we did this, good things happened. I’m sorry, but I’ve got to go, and I have no time to explain.”

A naive part of us expects an explanation. Why is the tradition important? Unfortunately, we will never get that explanation. Our ancestors are gone. Reality is complicated and it might’ve taken many generations for the tradition to form. It might be that it’s too complicated to put into words. There are things that can only be understood through life experience.

Yet, it is precisely through this way of flying blind that we gain an advantage should we take it. When we follow a tradition, we stand to reap its benefits without realizing how or why we’re reaping the benefits. We get to inherit them from our predecessors through the tradition.

“Traditions are experiments that worked.”

Notice: worked is in the past tense. They worked in the past, and this is certain. However, there is no guarantee that what once worked will continue to work. Why? Because the world surrounding the tradition can fundamentally change.

Most of the time, traditions do continue to work. But, what about the times when they don’t? What if there’s danger in following such traditions? The problem we’re up against is that there’s no easy way to answer that question. Following traditions necessitates some amount of blind trust.

Furthermore, contending with new ideas is more difficult than we’d like to admit.

New ideas are often bad ideas. It usually turns out to be the case that there was a reason behind the traditional idea. But occasionally, a new idea isn’t merely a good idea… a new idea can represent a significant paradigm shift. To miss that opportunity can be a costly mistake.

The best we can do is listen to people with rich life experiences, listen to people without preconceived notions, and then take both perspectives into account. The experienced can help us attempt to understand how a tradition might be serving us. The inexperienced can point us to the possible emergence of a paradigm shift.