Slow growth

“For the most part, wisdom comes in chips rather than in blocks. You have to be willing to gather them constantly, and from sources you never imagined to be probable. No one chip gives you the answer for everything. No one chip stays in the same place throughout your life. The secret is to keep adding voices, adding ideas, and moving things around as you put together your life. If you’re lucky, putting together your life is a process that will last through every single day you’re alive.”

~ Ann Patchett, What Now?

We so often want the blocks. We want wisdom wholesale. We want it ready made, pre-built, no assembly required.

We want our wisdom, furthermore, neatly packaged and easily digestible. Prebiotics and post-biotics baked in, thank you very much. Water- and fat-soluble, for maximum absorption. Liposomal if possible.

That would all be amazing, but since you asked, I’d also love my wisdom vetted, curated, and fully catalogued. I’d like to not have to think about it too much, but rather that it be easily uploaded into my mainframe, complete with cutting edge search capabilities. I’d like to be able to call up sound bytes on demand. I’d like my wisdom to be a firmware upgrade that instantly fixes my poorly coded bits and gives me greater abilities, say in the arena of living as a better human.

It doesn’t seem too much to ask, does it?

Yet wisdom does indeed come, not ready-made, not even in blocks, but in chips. Forget fully assembled, this stuff comes chewed up to within an inch of life, then strewn across a radius far too wide to ever rein in. It comes, rather precisely, UNassembled, bits and bobs, flotsam and jetsam, and our only chance at catching it is to stay in the stream and see what bumps into our shins on any given day. Sometimes it’s a feather. Sometimes it’s a tree.

This putting together of oneself, this life’s work, it couldn’t be less linear. This is a challenge for we the left-brainers. There is no map, there is no list of treasures to find, and efficiency is not even our friend (what kind of game is this?). We will likely trample over the same spot seven times before that little shred of wisdom underfoot shows itself to be useful, intriguing, worthy of turning over in the hand at the very least. We will hit and miss and gather and cull more times than we can count; this is a messy process.

We don’t even know what we’re looking for, if we’re honest. Most of the time, we’re thinking about nice fragrant woodchips, fresh off the beaver’s tooth, but far more often, what’s presented has gone through far more than the beaver. It’s been consumed by the powerful forces and voices of time, and is well-on it’s way back to humus, back to the earth, so complete the deconstruction needed to crack open the treasures. We are in need of so much that we’re not looking for, these bits often coming in the form of creepy crawlies and droppings and all the things that help us to compost. The plugging of the nose won’t help, but it might make you feel better.

And then the collection… God, if only a life’s garnering of wisdom could resemble a well-tended garden. Think Martha-stylez here. You’ve lived long enough to acquire a few chips and shreds, maybe even a shiny nugget or two, you’ve learned to wade with open hands, at least on the best days, and there is, if you really look, a little trove growing. Wouldn’t it be great if it could at least stack up neatly, lay itself out like fine art?

Much more likely, what you will have is a low-tide assemblage, a pile sifted by the waves. Drift and rot and vegetation aplenty, grains and pebbles and the occasional shell or tooth for texture. Treasures, no doubt, wisdom in the raw, but it is not Martha’s garden, and this can be slightly hard to accept. We’re going to need far more than a logically-illustrated instruction manual and a hex wrench for this one.

There be wisdom there piled high, yes, but it is up to you to see how it all fits together into a life of love. You are tasked, once again, with sorting through, rooting out the microplastics and trash that somehow made it in without your consent, or even the egg case that served in times past, but has begun to stink in a less than life-giving manner. You and only you can see why the sea weed is preserved, why the shred of sand dollar must go, why the mangled piece of cedar bark serves as the keystone, and holds the whole works together.

The putting together of a life of wisdom will be a slow tender weave, requiring more of us than we think we have to give. It is likely to be a feral creature for most of our days, no matter our preference for domesticity. It will most certainly not take the shape that we think, if it takes any shape at all. What is sure is that it will never follow blueprint nor expectation. What is sure is that it will be beauty incarnate. Incarnate in us.