The Deliberate Practice of Wisdom
Some people deliberately practice tennis or deliberately practice guitar. I realize now that I have spent my life in a deliberate practice of wisdom. From a very young age, I can remember when people would ask what do you want to be when you grown up, I would think, wise. I want to be wise. I would not say that because that is not what adults are looking for from children. My usual answer was pediatrician, people loved the idea that I wanted to be a doctor. So, I said what adults liked to hear, rather than what was true. I also inherently knew that this most important of all questions in our society, is always answered with a job title, not a virtue. We are socialized to deny our internal truth from a very young age folks.
This internal yearning for wisdom has been a sort of through line in my life. It may sound quite deep and noble. But the truth is, if I had finished that sentence, I wanted to be wise so that I WOULD KNOW WHAT TO DO. All caps to show that the phrase “I don’t know what to do” was essentially screaming inside me all my life. So, noble? Maybe. I certainly could’ve latched on to much worse coping strategies, but there is a shared human quality of feeling lost inside the realities one lives with and wishing someone, somewhere would help us understand what to do.
And, as I find is true in most aspects of life, we must hold a both/and energy here. The answers are all within you. The answers are all within me. It is all an inside job. I can only find my truth inside of me AND also it is a solitary journey one cannot really do alone. We need guides, mentors, elders who provide insight and bing bing wisdom! But culturally, these folks are in short supply. So, we have excellent self help books…and yoga studios. We also have Wayfinder guides. With weird tools that challenge our limiting beliefs and pull us out of our repetitive patterns and shake us up to get playful and creative. Guides who hold up a mirror to help you zoom out and see the blind spots. Give me a call, let’s see where we can find your through lines in your life, your particular version of what it would mean to become wise. We will explore the unlayering of the socialized answers that were ingrained in you to keep the people around you comfortable, and instead let’s hear the quiet voice of your soul answering, what do you want to be when you grow up?
