Stranger Wisdom
"Conventional wisdom states"... That's how it goes when someone is about to lay some advice on me. But really, what does that mean? Conventional wisdom. Since when do we look at convention and call it wise? I ask the scattered few around me and the consensus is that it means "accepted truth." Accepted Truth. Let's look at that for a moment.
There was a time when it was an accepted truth that the world was flat, and that the sun rotated around the earth. Conventional wisdom once stated that a witch would float, and that by holding a few posies in your pocket you could avoid the plague. It was once held as true that the government was benevolent and trustworthy, and that war was the quickest way to peace.
As these were proven false in one way or another, the truths accepted about them were let go of. We never stopped to ask ourselves how we could have so easily accepted this apparent 'truth,' a belief held so tightly that many died to protect it, while now we look at these and chuckle about how 'those people' could have been so duped. We never ask ourselves; in how many ways have we been duped?
It seems now that this conventional wisdom may be nothing more than a belief held to be true, by some or many, until it is later disproved.
This is not wisdom. In fact, there is nothing at all conventional about wisdom. Wisdom is a truth, whether accepted or not (usually not), whether conventional or not (again, usually not). And the wisdom I have encountered in my life rarely comes from scientists, politicians, educators, or anyone else espousing any sort of applicable knowledge. In fact, the opposite is generally true. Those times when I have been blessed by words that went straight to the heart of the matter, it has been some random voice parting the clouds. Sometimes a child's, sometimes the old guy sitting next to me on the bus, often from a stranger. No, wisdom as I know it, has nothing conventional about it. Wisdom, as I know it, is strange . . . Stranger Wisdom.
An example. Sometime ago, a period in my life when I was a little lost, a little ungrounded, a little unfulfilled, I found myself at my favorite neighborhood bar seeking answers to the grandest of existential questions at the bottom of a very familiar glass. Alex sat down next to me. I am generally very quick in my rebuttal of any unwanted advances, as any girl who goes to the bar alone must be. But Alex pulled me, not with any aggression as I would normally resist here, but with a kind of subtle warmth, from my little Swiss cheese world. Maybe it was just timing on his side, maybe it something more auspicious. Maybe it was that he was speaking to me in French.
Now, I actually retained a surprising amount of my high school French class (thank you Madam Whalen), but my listening comprehension was never very good (sorry Madam Whalen), and the bottom of the afore mentioned glass ensured that this night would be no exception. He smiled a bottom toothless grin (Alex is old) as I stared at him, jaw slightly agape. How I must have looked to him, young girl alone at the bar so impressed by his grasp of the most romantic of romantic languages. "Huh?" I have always had a knack for words. He looked down for a moment (why do we do that? Does it really give more import to the following remarks?), then translated.
"It is not the results that matter in life. Rather, it is what happens on your way to the results that fulfills the human spirit."
I was floored. All my clever banter slipped from my slackened limbs the moment he mentioned my unfulfilled spirit.
"Oh Alex, please tell me how to fulfill this, my human spirit!"
Of course I didn't say it, but as all good sages should, Alex knew.
Over the next hour or so Alex told me about himself, and I absorbed him. This happens to me a lot. People tell me their life stories, guess I have the face for it, and more often than not, I love to absorb it, though I tend to absorb the ones I don't love, too. Occupational hazard perhaps.
Anyways, Alex is 69 years old and dressed to the nines. I guess he comes in often because he knows Chris the bartender, but I've never seen him. He sort of old man chuckles as he slaps his knuckley hands against his thighs and says, "I've got 5 bucks to my name." As if money means nothing, less than nothing, like it's better, more real, to not have. He says, "But I knew Gottleib since we were kids." Chris fills me in that Gottleib was once the richest man in New York due to his invention of and monopoly on the slum. But then Chris mentioned that Gottleib had recently died, and Alex didn't know. Guess life circumstances...they didn't keep in touch. He told me that they played basketball together as teens. "That's how I lost these teeth," he points to his vacant bottom jaw. It was in Argentina. ("Argentina the country?" "Yes, Argentina the country.") He was bleeding and they didn't even stop the game! "Well those Argentina guys are hard core." (What do I know?) "Was Gottleib there, too?" I thought this a more intelligent sounding question.
He went on. "1950. I was the number one shooter in Brooklyn." Chris agreed, "Coney Island has always put out the best basketball players." How does Chris know? He is only 31 and from Boston.
Alex looked around in a way that I could imagine Kerouac looking around a bar before offing on one of his journeys. "Think I'll go to Tavern on Jane. A more mature crowd." We winked at me to accent this last part. He was right. We weren't. We didn't know anything.
Chris let him keep his five bucks and he was gone. After he left, I realized how sorry I felt for him. Why do we do that? We assume a man of advancing age, alone, with not much money is a man deserving of our pity, as if this is some gift. He had given me the gift.
" . . .to fulfill the human spirit."
Who knows how to do that these days? Who even tries? Alex, in his age, experience and unequivocal poverty reminded me that night, in French, of my own youthful idealism. When I knew that the having of money, success, a pretty little mate, none of these could ever answer the question at the bottom of my glass. Why am I here?
To fulfill this human spirit.
Why are you here?
There was a time when it was an accepted truth that the world was flat, and that the sun rotated around the earth. Conventional wisdom once stated that a witch would float, and that by holding a few posies in your pocket you could avoid the plague. It was once held as true that the government was benevolent and trustworthy, and that war was the quickest way to peace.
As these were proven false in one way or another, the truths accepted about them were let go of. We never stopped to ask ourselves how we could have so easily accepted this apparent 'truth,' a belief held so tightly that many died to protect it, while now we look at these and chuckle about how 'those people' could have been so duped. We never ask ourselves; in how many ways have we been duped?
It seems now that this conventional wisdom may be nothing more than a belief held to be true, by some or many, until it is later disproved.
This is not wisdom. In fact, there is nothing at all conventional about wisdom. Wisdom is a truth, whether accepted or not (usually not), whether conventional or not (again, usually not). And the wisdom I have encountered in my life rarely comes from scientists, politicians, educators, or anyone else espousing any sort of applicable knowledge. In fact, the opposite is generally true. Those times when I have been blessed by words that went straight to the heart of the matter, it has been some random voice parting the clouds. Sometimes a child's, sometimes the old guy sitting next to me on the bus, often from a stranger. No, wisdom as I know it, has nothing conventional about it. Wisdom, as I know it, is strange . . . Stranger Wisdom.
An example. Sometime ago, a period in my life when I was a little lost, a little ungrounded, a little unfulfilled, I found myself at my favorite neighborhood bar seeking answers to the grandest of existential questions at the bottom of a very familiar glass. Alex sat down next to me. I am generally very quick in my rebuttal of any unwanted advances, as any girl who goes to the bar alone must be. But Alex pulled me, not with any aggression as I would normally resist here, but with a kind of subtle warmth, from my little Swiss cheese world. Maybe it was just timing on his side, maybe it something more auspicious. Maybe it was that he was speaking to me in French.
Now, I actually retained a surprising amount of my high school French class (thank you Madam Whalen), but my listening comprehension was never very good (sorry Madam Whalen), and the bottom of the afore mentioned glass ensured that this night would be no exception. He smiled a bottom toothless grin (Alex is old) as I stared at him, jaw slightly agape. How I must have looked to him, young girl alone at the bar so impressed by his grasp of the most romantic of romantic languages. "Huh?" I have always had a knack for words. He looked down for a moment (why do we do that? Does it really give more import to the following remarks?), then translated.
"It is not the results that matter in life. Rather, it is what happens on your way to the results that fulfills the human spirit."
I was floored. All my clever banter slipped from my slackened limbs the moment he mentioned my unfulfilled spirit.
"Oh Alex, please tell me how to fulfill this, my human spirit!"
Of course I didn't say it, but as all good sages should, Alex knew.
Over the next hour or so Alex told me about himself, and I absorbed him. This happens to me a lot. People tell me their life stories, guess I have the face for it, and more often than not, I love to absorb it, though I tend to absorb the ones I don't love, too. Occupational hazard perhaps.
Anyways, Alex is 69 years old and dressed to the nines. I guess he comes in often because he knows Chris the bartender, but I've never seen him. He sort of old man chuckles as he slaps his knuckley hands against his thighs and says, "I've got 5 bucks to my name." As if money means nothing, less than nothing, like it's better, more real, to not have. He says, "But I knew Gottleib since we were kids." Chris fills me in that Gottleib was once the richest man in New York due to his invention of and monopoly on the slum. But then Chris mentioned that Gottleib had recently died, and Alex didn't know. Guess life circumstances...they didn't keep in touch. He told me that they played basketball together as teens. "That's how I lost these teeth," he points to his vacant bottom jaw. It was in Argentina. ("Argentina the country?" "Yes, Argentina the country.") He was bleeding and they didn't even stop the game! "Well those Argentina guys are hard core." (What do I know?) "Was Gottleib there, too?" I thought this a more intelligent sounding question.
He went on. "1950. I was the number one shooter in Brooklyn." Chris agreed, "Coney Island has always put out the best basketball players." How does Chris know? He is only 31 and from Boston.
Alex looked around in a way that I could imagine Kerouac looking around a bar before offing on one of his journeys. "Think I'll go to Tavern on Jane. A more mature crowd." We winked at me to accent this last part. He was right. We weren't. We didn't know anything.
Chris let him keep his five bucks and he was gone. After he left, I realized how sorry I felt for him. Why do we do that? We assume a man of advancing age, alone, with not much money is a man deserving of our pity, as if this is some gift. He had given me the gift.
" . . .to fulfill the human spirit."
Who knows how to do that these days? Who even tries? Alex, in his age, experience and unequivocal poverty reminded me that night, in French, of my own youthful idealism. When I knew that the having of money, success, a pretty little mate, none of these could ever answer the question at the bottom of my glass. Why am I here?
To fulfill this human spirit.
Why are you here?
posted by Solador at 6:26 PM
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