In his “The Big Elsewhere”, Robert Brady after building a dry stone wall, says
…that any worthy effort is a dialog, that wisdom is a living thing, not frozen in time, not a doctrine or a dogma, not a monument, not a library, not a printed book or ether page, and that you are born with wisdom ready and waiting to be known to you.
So true….that we are never done learning, never complete in our knowledge. That should keep us humble, and teach us to live with uncertainty, and be a constant stimulus to our curiosity. When he says “…you are born with wisdom ready and waiting to be known to you”, then I recall Elizabeth Gilbert, from her “Big Magic”
The universe buries strange jewels deep within us all, and then stands back to see if we can find them. The hunt to uncover those jewels – that’s creative living.
But it also sets me up to hear Bob Brady’s next point –
What does living wisdom tell us? Amongst other things, that the solution is where the problems are: in ourselves.
After the best part of forty years working as a doctor with each day filled with one to one consultations with patients I’m more convinced than ever that the only healing which ever occurs comes from within the individual. Each of us is unique and as “complex adaptive systems” we are self-healing. Good medicine is what supports the personal, unique wisdom of the organism.
Prolonged lack of contact with that wisdom lies at the heart of our problem, and if we continue in our current way we are ended: the real thing won’t stand for it. Existence must be a dialog with the present, as the living, thinking person is taught by any art, any worthy endeavour. You are instructed and guided by the very task, the very ongoing. You are taught the true way most truly only by traveling it, not by standing still and listening to others tell you the way, or by looking at an old map of where others have gone.
I think we gloss over the fact that we are adaptive creatures. We are constantly adapting. We are “open systems” continuously picking up energy, information and molecules from the environments in which we live and adapting our whole being to the changes. We are dynamic creatures, never fixed, never static, constantly learning, developing and growing. The only way to learn to live is to learn by living!
Bob Brady goes on to distinguish dead from living wisdom –
Dead wisdom obviates dialog by saying: “Do it this way because we have always done it this way.” Dead wisdom souls a dead society. Living wisdom, on the other hand, like all that is ongoing, is always and ever new. Living wisdom is green, the green of grass, the green of leaf, green of the living layer beneath the bark of a tree. It is the green youth and hope in hearts that are alive.
Tradition, dogma and “evidence” can all become “dead wisdom”, because they can all claim a certainty which will ultimately turn out to be at best incomplete, and at worse false.
Living wisdom is “always and ever new”.
You’ll learn it today.
Heroes Not Zombies 