There’s a whole book of wisdom in the Bible. It’s called the book of Proverbs. There are, conveniently, 31 chapters in the book of Proverbs, reading one chapter a day makes for a tidy month of wisdom. And that’s what I did, a lot of times.

Solomon, son of King David, was approached by God in a dream and offered anything. God said “Hey, tell me what you want me to give you, and I’ll see what I can do”.

And famously, being apparently wise beyond measure already, Solomon ignored the opportunity for greater wealth or long life. Instead he asked to be even wiser still. An absolute glutton for wisdom.

God was pleased and granted his wish because that’s how God do, and along with it gave Solomon long life and riches to boot.

Now what do you think of that story? It’s sort of like wishing for a million wishes.

I grew up with a concept of wisdom that was largely human. I looked to men to be wise in my life. Sometimes women. Mostly men. And as I got older I realized that in almost every case, they had prioritized wealth or power or secrets over wisdom. One by one most of them fell in front of me, and I was bereft. I felt angry and I felt betrayed. They were, as the Proverbs would put it, wise in their own eyes.

I am not angry. Not exactly. But I am aware and I am mindful of my own quest for wisdom in my own life.

I have been wise in my own eyes. I know what it feels like. It feels like conceit. It feels like a certain knowledge that my choices or beliefs or even my values are somehow better or higher than others’. It’s ugly to me. I grow in vigilance as I get older. I think that’s natural. It’s happening naturally and it’s why those we find wise in our life tend to be older, and it’s why wisdom exhibited in the young is so unique and special. And a little tiny bit suspicious…

When I initially did this values sort for myself I very nearly cast this card aside. In the end, it made it to my top five.

It’s not that I wouldn’t have had a value for wisdom in the way I understood it as a young’n. But I didn’t know if I felt like it was affecting my choices. Affecting my tasks and time management. I don’t necessarily feel particularly wise. I certainly wouldn’t bill myself that way. I can think of many unwise choices I’ve made, certainly. I’ll refer you to the daring essay for a fuller accounting.

But do I value it?

And then I looked, again, at the little description on the bottom.

A mature understanding of life. And something about that clicked for me. Really resonated.

Oh, how I want a mature understanding of life. How I wish I had a mature understanding of life.

There’s so much I do not understand. There’s so much pain and hurt and awfulness in the world that I can hardly bear to look sometimes. I wish I could understand starvation in Sudan or senseless wars of aggression and taking and expansion extraction and empire. I wish I could understand the things we’re willing to do for sex or money or power.

There’s so much about our lack of response to cultural wrongs, planetary-sized injustices. How can it even be? How can we allow these things? I want to scream. I want to shout. Oh, my soul.

What does it take to develop, or discover or find a mature understanding of life? How long must we wait to feel it in our bones? I am not young, and I am not old. When will I be wise? When will I understand?

I look around at my own elders and I do not often see wisdom anymore. I catch fleeting glimpses and little ghostly remainders.

I’m starting to feel like wisdom is a choice. Or a set of choices. Or a posture that says “I’m watching! I’m listening! I’m not there yet, but I want to be!” I’m starting to feel like a mature understanding of life is an understanding of how hard everything is to understand.

I’m starting to feel like wisdom is a series of small choices that open and expand the roadmap. We don’t understand every road, every tree, every barn in the county. But as we root into a community we slowly start to know our way around a little bit.

And maybe that mature understanding of life feels so far away and so elusive because it’s different for every person. A mature understanding of your life will be different from mine. Maybe we’re meant to share maps, and overlay them on one of those cool light tables that my friend the graphic designer uses. I lay my understanding down and you lay yours down atop it, and we gather as many friends and relations together as we can. We collect them like Pokémon. Gotta catch ‘em all.

We compare wisdoms, and we compare all of the successes and defeats that have brought us to where we are and we gain a broader collective sort of wisdom that is less of a hill for us to conquer, and more of a mountain to be climbed together. Maybe we’re all meant to act as guides for one another. You guide me and I’ll guide you and we’ll get there together.

Maybe that’s the whole point OF life. Perhaps the most important thing is to learn to gain wisdom in the context of community. Helping one another. Bearing one another’s burdens. We make it across the finish line of wisdom together, or we don’t make it at all.

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