In Search Of… Wisdom

 

I’ve reached an age where I wonder: what’s it all about? And, how’d I get here? “Here” being me in the here and now. I expect that’s rather common. But I suspect most people search for their answers in wildly different places. And I’ve little doubt that they, each of them, come to as many conclusions are there are people.

Then again, perhaps not. I know a great many people who look no further than their family; and find little meaning elsewhere. If they do, look elsewhere, they keep their quest to themselves. Outwardly, they speak only about their family, parents, children, grandchildren. That’s fair, given how much they’ve invested in it. There are others who converse only about sports. Or politics. To each his own. Sports is an easy subject: it ruffles few feathers. Politics is another matter; if there is a more divisive subject, I don’t know what it is.

Sadly, I may be in that latter camp. Recently, though, I’ve begun to realise that there is little point in expressing any opinion on the subject, however much I wish to: no one, I’ve come to realise, will ever change anyone else’s opinion. Ever. Regardless how exacting one’s argument might be, regardless how insightful they might believe theirs is, it matters not a jot; the listener will only double down on their belief, not matter how ill-thought-out or erroneous the speaker may find it.

Perhaps that’s my first spark of illumination, my first glimmer of wisdom. More to follow, maybe.

Where might one find wisdom? Most people once gained what passed as that illusive state listening to their elders, a process begun at birth. It’s what we do: we observe, we collate, file away, and filter everything we see and hear through the sieve we were taught. One only observes the world through tinted lenses, as it were. Sadly, not all lenses are equal. Some lenses are cracked. Some are gloriously kaleidoscopic. Most are merely banal.

Which is mine? That might depend on the listener. Given the response I receive from the limited audience I observe, mine is largely out of step with those around me. We just don’t see eye to eye. We consume different news, and indeed different entertainment. I watch sports, like a great many other people I cross pass with, but am bored by the endlessly repetitious discourse surrounding it. Besides, what wisdom can be mined from it? Perseverance, for one; that might be its most important lesson. That and giving one’s all to a cause. I find sports riven with tribalism, however. That heated arguments should ensue over the colour of one’s preferred jersey baffles me. More damning, and this is my prejudice, far too many of the “weak” have been bullied by golden god “jocks,” for reasons apparent to only those predatory perpetrators, for me to enjoy their company, should they ever let slip they were ever one of their number. Enough said on that.

I prefer to find wisdom from another source: the humanities (the humanities, simply put, are the study of human society and culture, the engagement in philosophy, religion, literature, and the performing and visual arts). This is not surprising: I was largely raised by my mother, a reader. My father would have preferred that I had been more active in sports than I was: He took pride in my successes in track and field; but he would have preferred I play hockey, that being his first love when young. But he made his living in sales, and spent a good chunk of his working life on the road; so, his influence was limited. Thus, my mother’s love of the arts was more influential. She painted, joined crafty clubs, and read. It’s no wonder, then, why my interests lie where they do.

I read. It was a struggle, I recall. I lagged behind my peers. But I persisted. Thing is, when one persists, one invests a great deal of time in that persistence. I found myself spending more time than others with my nose in a book. I won’t say that what I read, early on, was particularly enlightening: I read a lot of supernatural fiction, at first, Stephen King, and the like. Then fantasy. It was only in science fiction that I recognised my first glimmer of philosophy on the page. It was replete with ideas and opinion, if one saw beyond the warp drive, the phasers and blasters, and the monsters on the page and screen. I did not read philosophy in its pure sense. I did begin to read the classics, however, in university. Fantasy led to history and Greek mythology. Classic film led to Hemingway and other contemporary literary prose.

Recently, I’ve actually begun to consume more classic literature, and history, and biography and memoirs. And poetry. And philosophy.

One wonders which is more valuable? One might imagine that philosophy is; unless you disparage it as useless twaddle (which some do, most notably those who believe that everything must have immediate economic value, or is not worth attention; or those who wonder what use it has on their practical day-to-day lives). One might also assume that non-fiction is more valuable than fiction. Or that anything Greek or Roman is hopelessly outdated, and has no bearing on modern existence. I beg to differ. The ancients were still modern humans; they grappled with the same existential questions that plague and baffle us still. True, their political lives and experience were vastly different, so too their religious beliefs; but that does not invalidate their questions or their answers to those questions. Gilgamesh grappled with Pride, Loss, and Death. As to non-fiction, non-fiction is not necessarily fact: the perspective and opinion of someone extolling neo-liberal beliefs and values will come to radically different conclusions than someone on the radical left. “Fact” is in the eye of the beholder. And their “truth” may be onerous, if not criminal, to those not in their echo chamber.

I have, in conversation, expressed the opinion that truth can be found in Fiction. That has ruffled certain feathers and raised ardent criticism. How can fiction be truth, they disagreeable cry! Simply thus: an author ponders the truth of their time. That truth is filtered through the lens of their time, their experience, and their culture; but it is truth, all the same. Of a sort. Hemingway’s view of the world was very different from Faulkner’s. Jane Austen’s observations were different from Emily Bronte’s. So too Timothy Findley’s from Cormac McCarthy’s. Each will see the world in very different light, depending on upbringing and experience. Each is as valid and the next. Granted, an author’s views must be vetted: someone writing in the antebellum South may have views and prejudices that are decidedly abhorrent to your own. But one can learn from that. Call it time travel. Or immersion.

I’ve read that reading fiction fosters empathy. It allows you, the reader, to get into someone else’s head, and to know them (the fictional character, and perhaps even the author) more intimately than you could ever know your closest acquaintances. One can never truly know another’s heart and mind, after all, however long you’ve known them. We humans are complex beings. We change. In that light, we may never truly even know ourselves. Our understanding of our world will never be complete, either. But characters in a novel are. They are the creation of the writer. And they are aspects, fragments of their inner consciousness. If one can gain such insight and empathy from fictional characters, and engage in social commentary from decades, even centuries past, one wonders what one might glean from Marcus Aurelius’ Meditations, or from Plato and Epicurus, or Homer and Aeschylus. Or Arthur Miller and Tennessee Williams.

It’s all grist for the mill in terms of Wisdom, to my mind.