30 Day Blogging Detritus, March Edition

Day 7- Wisdom

What does wisdom mean to you? Give an example.

Unlike day 6, this prompt is pretty hard. Wisdom means lots of different things, it's hard to nail it down to one over-arching concept of what it means to me.

I mean, we all know the whole "God grant me the strength to do the stuff, the patience (?) to do the other stuff, and the wisdom to know the difference" quote. Well, all of us except me, obviously. But yeah, that's wisdom definitely.

There's also my grandma's wisdom category stuff. Stuff like "always take a sweater", and "always drink your booze out of the appropriate glass". My grandma was pretty rad. And wise. I loved her.

But what's the connection between all those seemingly unconnected threads of things we think of as wisdom? There's got to be something they all have in common, right? I hope so anyway, I hate the idea of such a messy concept of wisdom as that- I'd rather it be something I can put in a box and tie-up with a ribbon.

So in the interest of actually answering the question- to me, wisdom is paying attention to our mistakes. I think anyone can be wise about something if they take a minute to step back and look at it. Even the densest person can glean some meaning or learn something about a situation if they're mindful.

For instance- my grandmother's fantastic advice that she obviously passed on after paying attention to things and learning from it. At some point, she went somewhere without a sweater- maybe it was summer, maybe she didn't think she'd need it- and froze her adorable ass off. I can hear her in my head: "Whelp, I'm takin' a sweater everywhere now..."

Likewise, at some point, she was probably drinking her old-fashioned out of a coffee mug or something and someone said to her: "God, woman, you do realize it's 10 AM?" To which she thought: "That's true... but if I were drinking this old fashioned out of a posh old-fashioned glass, it wouldn't be hobo-drinking, it would be brunch!"

Also, someone out there realized that there are things to hold on to, things to let go of, and one must possess wisdom (through paying attention and learning from our mistakes) to know the difference.

I'll never forget one of my favorite pieces of wisdom that came out of the mouth of one of my kids when he was the ripe old age of 10. He was giving advice to his brother who was just entering kindergarten and didn't know what to expect from the big scary world of elementary school. "Sean," he said. "Just make sure when you go pee in the boys' bathroom, don't pull your pants all the way down- the big kids will laugh at you because they can see your butt."

So see? He made a mistake, paid attention, and learned from it. Boom. Wisdom.


-TPB