A Question Of Wisdom

Sky so sweetly asked "But, do tell - how did you get to be so wise? What gave those innocent eyes the insight of a woman who has lived on this earth far more years than 21?"

My mom and I were discussing this very question over dinner on my birthday. I've always thought of wisdom as something that comes from experience, and experience as something that comes with age. I was taught very young that it was so important to listen to your elders. It was so important to take in what they were saying, to accept it as truth, to understand that they knew things that I had yet to learn. I do understand that. I listen very closely to the advice they dispense, the stories they share with me. I love that almost everyone who reads and comments on this blog is older than me because they share with me those lessons that they've taken away from their lives.

But when I stop to think about it, I realize that I listen to everyone that way. I learn just as much from the children who tell me stories as I do from the adults. I learn just as much from the friends who see the world so dramatically different than I do as the ones who see it the same way. I learn just as much from listening to myself as I do from listening to everyone else. I am living to learn.

I am living to share my own stories and experiences and wisdom. I think that I've always underestimated myself in terms of what I know. I've never considered myself a particularly smart person. I defined smart people as being those who could make witty jokes about current events at dinner parties, who could get into heated debates about politics, who could eloquently express themselves with intricate and elaborate words. I wasn’t one of those people.

I was the girl who sat back and listened. I was the girl who watched the way people used their hands when they spoke or gave each other slight glances of emotion. I was the girl who noticed when the child in the room was about to get restless or the waiter became frustrated with the customer two tables over. I am still that girl.

The minute my mother said, “where wisdom is concerned, you’re off the charts, you must know that,” I knew it. I realized while we had been talking, my mind had been wandering to the two elderly couples sitting at the table behind us. I know it sounds morbid, but I had been wondering if they were prepared to die. I wondered if they had gotten all that they had hoped out of life, wondered if they had regrets, wondered if they still had plans for the future. I wondered what I would think about at that age, and realized I already do think about those kinds of things. It’s funny that I can be such a child and an adult all at once.

I suppose we all are really. We all have those things that we know and those things we have yet to learn. We all have a future and a past. We are all wise, in our own ways. I have yet to hear of a person who managed to get through their entire life without learning something. It’s nice to think of things that way.

I’ve been thinking so much over this past year about how big my life is, and yet, how small my existence is in the grand scheme of things. As a child I dreamed of changing the world, of becoming a part of history. I wanted to be learned about in schools. I wanted to be remembered long beyond the time when all of the people who knew me had left the earth, but things are different now. All that I want for myself is to know, for me, that my time spent here was worthwhile, and I know that the most important person to deem what is worthwhile is me. I am the creator. I am the narrator. I am the storyteller and this is my story.