A very balanced art of writing. Appreciated. I have nothing to add. But to share some more thoughts on top. You may find them related or not :)

From my personal experience I can say that as a young adult I heard, read or saw something and it impressed me. I was immediately on fire and passed on what I heard, read or saw and thought I had found the philosopher's stone. Only, that it wasn't. It was just another stone on my path. HaHa!

An old friend accused me some years ago of falling for everything that some strange people told me. And she was right, I did.
I had to make the experience that my chosen role models were not absolutely right, because it was not my style to know or suspect beforehand - without trying things out, being there at events that actually took place - that I could be wrong.
How people can always know so well in advance that a thing has no hand and no foot was not clear to me; I thought of my friend that she had basically avoided self experience and had taken on the role of admonisher towards me because I was doing too many stupid things in her eyes.

To become experienced, committing stupidity is often - not always - a prerequisite. They say it is the privilege of the young and I agree. I, on the other hand, thought of her as doing too little risky things and regulating herself too strictly in the first place.

The generation conflict is real. Even more so as the old and the young hardly come together outside work-life. Their worlds do not touch each other often and habitually enough and so the old cannot be of valuable meaning to the young which makes them often miserable, cynical, self-devaluing individuals who are doomed to hang out with peers for their life long (I'm exaggerating a bit to make the point).

Oneself must become old before one sees that the typical sayings of parents were correct in their simplicity, only that one dismissed them as authoritarian, because one had no clue about how it is to spend more than just one or two decades on earth.

Lucky can be those who had mentors when young, who were guided and genuinely challenged and disciplined in a benevolent way, and early on knew what to aim for. To be looking for wisdom and insight for such a long time as we "civilized peoples" do, actually needs a longer lifespan. LOL:D in order to reach maturity (which happened in non civilized tribes early in life, at puberty) we civilized humans need to read a thousand books, change professions, have experiences of numerous kinds to finally mature (if ever). I'd say that pre modern times made it easier for humans to enter the realm of adulthood than modern and post modern times.
We often compare civilized realms with a "jungle" but I think that the real jungle is far more direct, it gives you immediate answers on stupid behavior than the complex world of a citizen.

Greetings to you.