Thoughts On Wisdom

Sonse, CC BY 2.0 , via Wikimedia Commons

Let’s face it, vitality and a robust engagement of life are concentrated on the front end of a human existence. Sure, there are octogenarian plane-jumpers and marathon runners, but they’re not the statistical norm. Later periods of life are generally marked by relative ease, less challenge and less strife.

On the other hand, it’s easier to get oneself in trouble when young. Most people make fewer egregious mistakes as they get older. Experience shows us how to tend to our self-preservation more mindfully, and, at least I’d like to think, most of us refine our moral compasses.

It gets easier to get along with people later in life, unless one is determined to hold on to chronic crankiness due to being so heavily invested in projecting that identity.

We tend to avoid saying that which will cause turmoil. We cut fewer moral corners. We get more comfortable with vulnerability and cultivate more tenderness in our relationships.

In a word, we gain wisdom.

It makes the rough spots more bearable and deepens our insights into what this thing called life means.

It’s a fine thing, but it’s not laid in our laps. Without encountering some of those pesky hard knocks, we don’t acquire all the wisdom we could.

There’s no way of telling the young person who has just made a dumb move and realized it that it will serve him or her well in important ways in the long term.

One ought to have certain memories, that, when they resurface, sting to contemplate. We never forget the damage attendant to the mistakes, but we start to realize that every fallen human being – which would be every human being – has inflicted damage on this world.

To earn wisdom, you have to have an acquaintance with foolishness, You have to have harbored some regret, some embarrassment, some envy, lust and rage. You have to fully take in that at certain points in your life, you’ve been downright unappealing.

At a certain phase in the acquisition of wisdom, we begin to hope that someone, somewhere will cut us some slack. And then we see that those around us feel the same way, and that maybe, in some way, we all ought to get that. Maybe “deserve” is too strong a term, but most of us develop a sense that there’s no connection among us if held grudges are the norm.

We like to be around people with a high degree of wisdom. We feel safe around them. We admire them. They come across like they’ve won a great prize.

Wisdom manifests itself in such conduct as tact, discernment, the willingness to extend grace, striving for fairness, keeping an eye on one’s long-term best interest, and no longer looking for absolutes anywhere other than divine truth.

Wisdom is probably the closest to total contentment we can achieve in this lifetime. It points the way to a state of being in which everything really and truly will be alright.

It’s like a precious metal refined by fire. Its momentum gathers when one lays down one’s fear of discomfort.

It’s the kind of strength that doesn’t need to show itself off. There’s no pretending one has it.

The irony is that, even if one retains all one’s lifelong foibles, one will acquire some wisdom. The nature of this world is such that it’s unavoidable.

But a great treasure awaits those who seek to cultivate it. You become more human than you’d ever dreamed possible.