wisdom and foolishness!

Each day, and the living of it, has to be a conscious creation in which discipline and order are relieved with some play and pure foolishness. May Sarton

Mingle a little folly with your wisdom; a little nonsense now and then is pleasant. Horace


I think that losing the ability to do things like have snowball fights, look at the sky with a feeling of renewal, and feel the full magic of every season is terribly sad. I mean, no matter how much knowledge one accumulates, all of the facts and theses and dictums are worthless if he has no wisdom. And wisdom, to me, has nothing to do with how much one has studied or how good one is at reciting a schpiel of information. Not to say that facts and information are meaningless - but they are not so meaningful unless something valuable is learned from them - not just an improved database of facts but a living and growing lesson in wisdom.

That's the problem I have sometimes with academia - why sometimes I view academia as grey and sad. I do feel so desolate for those who have reams of knowledge about some subject but have nothing real inside of them but dry cynicism. And it's also why sometimes I laugh at things like angst!poetry: when someone writes a painful and searing poem or something, and then goes out for coffee and talks bitterly about seemingly meaningless concepts that they may or may not have invented themselves, all the while pretending to wallow in a supposed agony of thought. It makes me want to hand them a pair of polka-dotted socks and show them real happiness - not just theoretical bliss.

Knowing this makes me feel better because I must admit to sometimes getting in such a wallowy state. Angsting about how oppressed I am by new scientific breakthroughs and the philosophical repurcussions of the discovery of such-and-such new chemical, throwing myself into a dark whirlwind of conundrums and hacking at questions to try to find answers - seemingly not being able to accept that the beauty is partly in the mystery itself. Such a dreadful and such a fake state, when every notion of happiness is batted away like a fly on the wall swatted by illusory theoretical nonsense. In short, sometimes I'm afraid of life because so many questions are unanswered, because so many theoretical problems keep surfacing. But really I think that what I really need is to twirl around in the cold autumn woods, to feel leaves cracking underfoot and to witness the sky wispy with spiritlike white clouds, and to laugh with friends about absurd things.

I think that one can know a very impressive deal of things, but really true wisdom lies in accepting and even praising the mystery, and having amazing faith that there is something that we cannot know. And not dwelling overmuch on this, but just loving the small revelations that can be found in all the secret places and even the obvious places sometimes... and never ever presuming to be too sophisticated to jump in piles of leaves and have snowball fights. That's it - I think "sophistication" is really a great ugly thing, that just sucks the life out of everything. Because it loves complicated words and carefully articulated cynicism, leaving no room for real life. And real life is going out on Halloween night, and going to any lengths to help a friend, and drumming up inadequate words to make things better for someone, observing strangers, and looking at red leaves falling and needing nothing else to affirm goodness. Wisdom is being happy to be unsophisticated.