Tag: wisdom

Day 16 Lenten Meditation: Wisdom




Note: I apologize for missing two days of meditation: I was at a cabin retreating from life for a little while. It didn’t have reliable internet so I didn’t post. I did, however, meditate a lot.

Today’s meditation is about wisdom. Wisdom is not just knowledge, it’s knowledge put into play in the context of the wider world behind it. Knowledge is knowing the facts; wisdom is knowing how to use the facts. Wisdom is the knowledge that comes from experience and learning from experience, and is flexible enough to take everything into account.

Some people say wisdom comes from age, but there are many old fools out there that prove the lie. Some of those fools, unfortunately, are in the government and think themselves very wise. However, knowledge is knowing how to build a nuclear bomb; wisdom is never building it in the first place. 

Wisdom doesn’t always follow the status quo; it forges new paths to promote the well-being of human beings all over the world as well as the earth and nature itself. Wisdom requires us to use our knowledge in new ways, evolving with the needs of creation.

Wisdom is what will save us; knowledge is not enough.


Day 28 Reflection: Wisdom

We are told that our elders hold wisdom (and having just reached AARP age, I certainly hope so). But at the same time, as people get older, many become more resistant to change. 

We are told that wisdom comes from experience, but some people learn nothing from their experiences.

How do we discern wisdom, then?

Wisdom doesn’t bubble up out of fear or anger, although fear or anger may make us reach for wisdom. It rises from the still pool at the center of our being.  It may goad us to act or ask us to wait, but it does so with a sense of what has gone before and a great deliberation. The answer it gives is grounded in humankind’s best nature, deep in understanding.

Do not mistake wisdom with the resignation of “things have always been this way”, or the self-righteousness of “things have always been this way”. Wisdom is not about preserving or giving to the past. Wisdom is about learning from the past and using it for advancing a life, a people, a world into its future.

Age as a symbolic construct: An iconoclast speaks

Today, I’ve chosen to talk about age as a symbolic construct in writing for two reasons:

1) I just watched the 35th anniversary directors’ cut of Star Trek: The Wrath of Khan yesterday. One of the running themes of this movie is aging, as experienced by the protagonist, Admiral James Kirk.

2) Today’s my birthday.

Aging symbolizes many themes and issues in writing. I won’t speak of absolutes here, but trends in what aging means in writing — and in society. I will illustrate with movies, because movies are fresh in my mind and they owe much of their genius (or lack thereof) to screenwriters:

 — Mortality. In Wrath of Khan, James T. Kirk has been promoted to a desk job as Admiral. He can’t see as well as he used to and needs reading glasses. He collects antiques — in fact, he feels he himself as an antique until he becomes involved in a battle to the death with a brutal, yet also aging, nemesis.

— Agency. Armande Voisin, the curmudgeonly old woman in the movie Chocolat, has diabetes at a time when control of the disease was not as possible as it is now. Her daughter fusses over her, scolding Armande about what she eats. chiding her not to exert herself, and other well-meant but controlling acts. No spoilers here, but Armande finally wrests agency from her daughter in a delightful but shocking way.

— Attractiveness. According to the movies, we consider men more handsome when they’re older — Sean Connery as James Bond comes to mind. This may have something to do with the instrumental expectations of accomplishment expected from men, because older men outside of the spy industry (see Raging Bull) aren’t lauded for their attractiveness.

We consider women less attractive as they’re older — we find women in their thirties and forties who want to express their desirability to be suspect, and we term them “cougars” — the classic example of a cougar is Mrs. Robinson from The Graduate, who is portrayed as predatory and desperate. Women are expected to be sexless after a certain age, which is why Harold and Maude horrified so many people — an 80-year-old woman in a possibly sexual relationship with a much younger man — a boy, even?

I like to play with age in my stories, just as I like to send up other conventions of culture. In one of my stories, a seventy-five-year-old man becomes a shaman as a result of his totem chasing him halfway across the state. It’s never too late to make a change in your life, right? People will receive this as a heartwarming twist.

On the other hand, in my first book (currently under re-re-editing), a fifty-year-old woman falls in love with a 20-year-old man and vice versa. This is not idle wish fulfillment on my part for those of you who notice I fit in the woman’s age demographic; I wrote it because I wanted to play with the concept — what if the woman holds back because she’s afraid of being considered a cougar, and what if the man was the pursuer? In other words, not The Graduate? Even as I write this, I feel like I have to apologize about this, because I’m afraid you’re thinking  “I can handle a semi-sentient vine and a woman with a plant superpower, but a twenty-year-old dating a woman three times his age?! That’s not believeable.”  Magic is magic, and if it takes magic to elevate the status of older women, I’m willing to do the job — even if that novel never gets published.

So, I’m another year older, and I forgot the one other bit of symbolism that comes with age, and that is wisdom. Think Spock in the progression of Star Trek movies (old universe, not new universe).  Spock goes from being a young, peculiarly unemotional crew member to an elder statesman and almost shamanic figure.  Even older women possess this quality in literature as is evidenced by a long literary history of wise grandmother figures and fairy grandmothers.

I will leave you to consider what aspects of aging I consider as I celebrate my 54th birthday.

PS: A couple weeks before Leonard Nimoy (who played Spock in the original universe) died, he hopped onto Twitter to adopt nieces and nephews. No kidding — what a way to show agency on one’s deathbed. I was one of the nieces he adopted. I’m honored to be an honorary niece of Leonard Nimoy, who showed me how to age well.