Stumbling Into Wisdom

I wonder what the beat poets, E. B. White, or Hesiod felt like when they sat down to write?

Were their heads brimming with ideas, just waiting for a chance to spill onto the page? Did William S. Burroughs stumble out of a party in Tangiers, filled with the burning desire to sit at his typewriter and loose the boozy muses?

If so, I can’t relate. Although I’d like to relate to the idea of boozy muses.

Does life build to an interesting crescendo, opening itself up to the storyteller’s genius? Is a classic thus born? Or is all of life as rigid as my office’s walls: filled with minutiae when idle and then inexplicably empty when it is time to turn straw into gold?

I’ll admit, there are some situations that on their surface have more of mystique, mystery, and mysticism. But we mustn’t forget that all experience is lived the same. And the difference between one experience and another is the work of the storyteller and not the story…liver? That can’t be right.

The point is, the words we have from the great luminaries are already possessed of an easy wisdom when we read them. And now, at the end of a long day, tired and uninspired, it’s hard to imagine that any words I could piece together could have the steady power I find in others’ writing.

But perhaps it’s the empty boredom that ultimately provides the gem. The one thing I have heard offered by all writers is that the writer’s job is to write, write again, and then write more; the outcome is less important. So long as I make the decision to start typing, and so long as I’m honest enough to allow the next words to go onto the page, there will be wisdom somewhere.

And who is to say what writing is wise, anyways? Wisdom does not live solely in the throat; it splits its time also in the ear and the heart. Writing something wise is only half the job. Wisdom must also be received.

So maybe before anyone read Gibran’s The Prophet, it was only composed of half-wise, hopeful ideas artfully set down by Gibran but not blossomed into wisdom yet. And then when the first adoring reader lost themselves in Almustafa’s musings, wisdom was created.

In any given moment, then, there is nothing of wisdom that I can capture as a writer. Wisdom writing does not exist without a wisdom reader. For the writer, there are only moments. And it’s not up to me which ideas have power or merit; it’s up to you, reader, and to posterity.

And if I wait around to see what you or posterity think, nothing will ever get written down, now will it?