I celebrated a good friend’s birthday yesterday and on my subway ride home I started thinking about how age affects our behavior and consequently our personal story. Most people say age brings more experience and wisdom. However, I believe age affects us in a more complex and subtle way.

Today’s society tends to value what Zen Buddhists call the “beginner’s mind.” It implies fresh insight unfettered by experience. With this in mind, I contend age means less now than a couple of decades ago. In today’s world most people are drawn to innovation, creativity and passion. None of these characteristics inherently grow with age.

In a seminal book on age and leadership, Geeks and Geezers, author Warren Bennis suggests age does strongly influence our values; more so than any other attribute including birthplace, race, ethnicity or religion. After interviewing 43 leaders of varying ages, Bennis concludes our deepest and most strongly held beliefs tend to correlate with what generation we come from. He defines anyone under 35 as a geek and anyone over 70 as a geezer.

Bennis suggests “geeks have bigger and more ambitious goals than geezers did at the same age; they aspire to ‘change the world’ and ‘make history’, whereas geezers were concerned with ‘making a living.’”

While I agree with Bennis that our core values are highly dependent on the generation we grew up in, I do not believe age is a significant indicator of compatibility between two people, success of an individual or even a signal of experience and wisdom.

The age of age as a standard for experience and wisdom is over. The most widely lauded and valued characteristics in society today - including innovation, creativity and passion - are age indiscriminate.

So happy birthday dear friend. I am sure you are glad to hear I believe getting older brings you nothing. Except sometimes you get a free drink at a bar.