The world is full of wisdom. Most people, however, don’t realize their own contributions to the collective sagacity. We tend to equate prudence with grey hair, monastic living, and eyes the color of a wintry sky. We think that meaningful percipience is only resident on mountain tops.
Perhaps that isn’t so bad; we don’t need a planet full of show-offs and bombasts. That is a risk with wisdom. Awareness of its possession can lead to arrogance. And there is plenty of that loose in the world these days. We don’t need to encourage more.
Still, it is worth acknowledging the quiet pervasiveness of perspective among us, perhaps because there is so much ugly individualism and egotism. We need more positive role-modeling in our lives. We need to see each other as capable of providing that mentoring.
Which we do – albeit inconsistently. In fact, if we open ourselves to listening, exemplars of wisdom abound, from the young and the old, the effete and the crude, the sacred and the profane. People may not be routinely wise from moment to moment; no, there is plenty of folly, even stupidity, in daily existence. But our fellow human travelers can also demonstrate their fair share of insight and perspective, in words as well as action. And it can manifest itself at the oddest and most unexpected of times.
“Daddy didn’t do anything wrong. He just made a mistake.”
That was my youngest daughter’s comment a decade plus ago when I forgot to watch a pot of stew on the stove. Heaps of seasoning and feverish stirring could not mask the burnt flavor in a meal that had been previously heading toward perfection. My wife had done all the work; my role was just to remember to pay attention to the pot and stir. I don’t recall why I didn’t just plant myself next to the simmering concoction. Bottom line: I did not and the stew was ruined. Our youngest’s timely declaration was written down and secured for posterity to the refrigerator door with a magnet. While it didn’t save me from profuse apology, nor lessen the selfishness of my blunder, it did soften the communal disappointment felt by family that a tasty vegetarian stew was no longer on the evening’s menu.
“I get to relive stages of childhood, because my kids demand that I see the world through their eyes.”
We were going around a table, offering personal insights before a collaborative meeting. There were representatives from health, education, justice, and community service disciplines. A colleague shared his perspective regarding life at home with his three young children. We all laughed. The truth within his spontaneous comment leapt at me. I immediately scribbled his words in my notebook so that I wouldn’t forget them.
It happens regularly, when I listen for it. People lower their guard or they decide not to raise one. They say how they feel. They share some part of themselves that they care about. They speak honestly, from the heart. Gems of wisdom spill unfiltered into my days.
Sometimes there is conscious intent behind these jewels of the commons. “We’re jumping from rock to rock,” Turbo said the last night I stayed with him, “just trying to cross the stream.” Damien Cave, a reporter for the NY Times, wrote an article this past week about Matt Zurbo, a father and oyster farmer in Tasmania, who was writing a children’s story a day for his 20 month-old daughter. Mr. Zurbo’s perspective on a life’s journey resonated with me. It reminded me of what my father told me that my grandfather once said when the two temporally tired one afternoon of bickering and my grandfather, staring out a window in the waning light of day, dropped his head and sighed . “You know, Ben, we’re all just trying to get by.” My grandfather wasn’t as purposefully poetic as Matt Zurbo. Perhaps, in his own way, he was expressing the same sentiment. It’s slippery out there. There aren’t easy signposts for how we should proceed. There aren’t handrails for the crossing. We are often doing the best we can not to fall in.
I wasn’t alive when my grandfather said those words to my father. And Granddad wasn’t alive when my father shared them with me many years later. Nonetheless, when I think about the scene, I feel, quite vividly, as if I’m in the room. In fact, I feel like I’m actually seeing – through my father’s eyes – Granddad loosen his shoulders, shake his head, and look up sadly into the evening light. And there, right there, mingled with some dust motes dancing on the last rays of day, I see Granddad let his soul show to my dad. To me.
Maybe that’s a helpful way to think about wisdom in our world: letting the soul show. Fanfare, drumroll, long treks up hillsides or into dense documents are not required. Just a deep breath, some soft eyes, and an open heart. The soul knows what to do next.
Thank you, friends, for your unguarded moments of revelation. You are very wise indeed.