Me Wise Not

I’m by no means a wise person – have never considered myself one, and could most definitely not recognize myself even close to being one. Never been much for wisdom. Making sense is more my thing; and of course, I presume, wisdom goes beyond merely making sense.

Eric Clapton use to say that he found wisdom from the solitary bluesmen when he was growing up; him being without a father and all. I can dig that – or at least part of it – the solitary bluesmen part; unlike Clappers, my beloved father has always been around and is still alive and well. However, my wisdom gurus was not exactly the booze-soaked, smoke-filled, broom-dusting, woke-up-this-morning, hellhound-chasing, cotton-pickin’, porch-rockin’ bluesmen. Wisdom for me came more from their ‘devil-child’ disciples such as Nanker-Phelge, which in time became Jagger/Richards.

“but what can a poor boy do, but to sing in a rock n’ roll band…”

I would have liked finding wisdom from sources closer around me, like from those who have many, many years ahead of me, hence much more experience of life and its many lessons; but the times they have tried to impart their version of wisdom on me, I could barely fathom any of them. It was all clichéd, contrived and even callous gobbledygook; which I eventually confirmed after experiencing enough of it to realise that between them they all sound the same. If there was any inkling of any wisdom to be had from them it was from what I call deriving wisdom through inversion – I would see the wisdom from not following through things they say or their course of action – by simply not doing what they say or do; and I’d always be all the better for it

Now thanks to being aware of fallacious discourses and differentiating between rhetoric and truth, I really am so much the better for not giving their pseudo-wisdom any more than the courtesy of listening despite being mind-numbing, eye-wateringly tedious. Oh the yawns I had to clamp my lips down to suppress; I even wondered if stifled yawns would escape through the ears and worried that I might blow my eardrums out. Come to think of it, if that did happen it might have been quite an act of grace as I would not have the hearing implement in place to hear them with.

Of course they must’ve meant well; even those preoccupied with their own pride and ego when sharing or imparting their wisdom; but like I said, it all just sounded the same. It’s as if they’ve made their general conclusions quite early in their lives and coded the rights, the wrongs, the how-to and how-not-to’s, the what-to and what-not-to’s, etc., into the body of code by which they will base their making sense of the world upon. So all they are imparting upon you as quasi-wisdom is their hold on to these codes throughout their lives; and how they have held on to them as examples for you to ponder on even though they have no bearing or semblance to any situation or circumstance you’re in.

Their quasi/pseudo-wisdom’s just full of passive verbs – be patient, be strong, persevere, soldier on, caution, beware, etc., but never the how’s – how to be patient, how to be strong, how to persevere, etc. That is where for me it falls short; and telling you that you should figure it out for your self, for your own sake, is simply disguising the fact that they have not a clue. After all, what they are doing is all part of the code; telling you those inanities is actually under their code as offering wisdom; as is telling you non-familiar or dissimilar examples of theirs is coded under sharing their wisdom from experience. So under the code, wisdom is offered, and under the code, that all comes under the ‘manifestations that we care’ category. Never mind that it did bugger all to alleviate your concerns or worries, because under the code if you do not benefit, you’re just a hapless dumb schmuck; and if you say that it doesn’t help, you’re just an ungrateful so-and-so. [Of course all this is without even opening discussions how wisdom is not just about outlining passive verbs. They’ve even coded what wisdom is just as they have coded the forms that are associated with it; such as the white haired, the wizened, the bearded, the ascetic, Oprah, etc.]

So in the absence of any guiding light or beacon of wisdom of any real benefit, what else if left to do but to be left to one’s own faculties and devices to make sense of whatever comes our way; and somehow, life is all the richer for that methinks.