Variables in the equation

I have experienced myself and I have watched young people learn to both play music and learn a language other than their own.  The learning process is the same.  Children play or speak irregularly at first.  Notes are wrong, sounds are wrong; timing is off, word order or tone is off; notes like triplets have to be practiced over and over, idioms have to be repeated or encountered frequently.  Finally, the music or the language emerges with recognizable cadence, rhythm, and sense.  And, with time, a certain familiarity and beauty surrounds a person's ability.  Even beyond this stage, one can perfect a craft to absolute heights of professionalism, ease, manipulatibility, and style.

I have heard people compare these stages to life.  They say it is possible to get better at life, to perfect it, sometimes even manipulate it.  I would like to think that is a definition of wisdom.  But, I think I am wrong about that.  It seems that life brings so many variables to the equation that people who try to solve the equation are successful at times and write about it during that given time.  But, what about later?  What about the equation when the variables change (which in life they invariably do).  What then?  People don't really record, especially for public consumption, the change in the variables and what happens to the equation at that point.

Wisdom just might be the ability to adapt well to the changing variables in life.  I think that would account for all the contradictory or variability of the proverbs one finds in a culture.  The adages seem to be all over the map.  Proverbs are mostly seen as a culture's collective wisdom.  But, I think life is too complex for a collected wisdom that is applicable to everyone in every situation.  So, I'm holding to the idea of adaptation.
It's much better suited for changes that inevitably happen.