What would I get from that relationship? Would I be wiser? Kinder? More responsible? Would I be able or willing to change my life in even a small way because a wise person told me to?
I already know I'm overweight. What have I done about it?
I already know my car and my house are a mess. What have I done about it?
Would a wise person give me some secret mantra to chant that would make me healthier? More self-disciplined? Harder-working?
Maybe the teacher hasn't appeared because the student isn't quite ready. I haven't used or followed all the wisdom already at my disposal. Why should I seek more?
Apropos of nothing else, I had a dream Saturday night in which I was lecturing a bunch of executives at a TV station about why television sucked and why they didn't do anything about it. I asked them which they would prefer to be: a Tiffany's, a Target or a Wal-Mart. I reminded them that William Paley had grown rich and successful with top-rated programs and still was able to have a news division that was highly-regarded and well-respected. I made fun of their consultant-driven programming.
I found during this persuasive talk that it became progressively more difficult to speak. I wanted to talk, but my mouth didn't seem to want to move.
I woke up at the end of it. The cats were climbing all over me because I had been giving my harangue out loud in my sleep, and they thought I was talking to them.
It's been eight damn years. I don't watch TV. I don't hang out with friends from my TV days. But it's like having some low-grade infection or something.
6 comments:
I'm guessing Hotei, the happy Bhudda, would tell you not to worry about your weight or cleaning the car. He was short and VERY fat and spent his time making little gifts for children and seeing the humor in everything. I think Hotei would say that when you focus on your flaws you feed them and make them bigger and you'd be better served to focus on your strengths and how to use them to better everyone around you. I also think the one thing Hotei would never do is chide you.
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Last night I was watching the movie trailer to that Millman guy’s book Way of the Peaceful Warrior and guess who plays ‘Socrates’ the wise mentor? Nick freakin’ Nolte. Rattled my imagination of a ‘wise man’.
Would a wise person instruct another? Wouldn’t they just point to our stuff and then it is up to us, as you infer? Honestly, I don’t know if I’d recognize a wise person if they took the time to bite me on the ass.
As for your TV dream, sounds like a nightmare.
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I don't think it wise to bite Nina's ass.
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Sounds to me like you already know a very wise person -- You. Maybe all you need do is listen to yourself more often.
I kinda agree with Nina. I think a wise person realizes she can't teach in the active sense of the word. A wise person, according a Socratic (and Westikatic) philosophy, is someone who doesn't think they are wise at all. Anyone who assumes they have no more to learn is the opposite of wise. Then again, some of us can assume we do hold more wisdom than others, and there's nothing wrong with that. It seems like to a wise person, takling about wisdom would be burdensome. Or fruitless. Then again, a wise person would have the patience to discuss wisdom because of the philosophical nature of the discussion (as opposed to "dude, my hummer is way better than your prius"). So I don't know. I suppose wisdom is subjective, just like the language we use to define it.
I personally like the idea that wisdom is acceptance and adaptability. But I also think it's innovation and the ability to apply new perspectives.
I also think wisdom is recursive. It's not static or finite. Wise people never stop learning.
I think a wise person realizes they MUST teach, knowing that most of their seed will fall on fallow ground.
I'm impressed with the idea of wisdom not being static. However, as my friend, Claude Anderson, used to say: there hasn't been much human evolution in the past 150,000 years. Thus, some things about the human condition are enduring. Other things may suffer the fate of relativism and deconstruction as culture changes. Certainly, I read some of the Tao te Ching and Confucian analects and I have the sense that this is something that expresses a bias for the culture of the time and place. Other times, I have "a-ha" moments of exhultant recognition. (by the way, am I the only one that finds such intellectual epiphanies sexy? It not only charges my libido, but is generally the trigger for an artistic outburst of creativity. Sometimes I wish I were a painter, dressed in tee shirt and blue jeans yelling "Stella!" at a canvas in reds and blues instead of tap tapping out stilted, turgid dialogue ... uhm...got off the track, didn't I?)
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