Wisdom, and the places to find it.

time was when i used to think wisdom lay at the threshold of turning twenty and entering the magical world of adulthood. all gawkiness, social misery and lack fo witty repartee would be things of the past. blushes would never again drown me in red pools of mortification, nor would the foot-in-mouth syndrome strike with such alarming regularity.

well, it seems i was -yet again- wrong.

i have found this most underrated quality of the human race in the most unexpected of places. in the sharply observed one-liners from my mother which condense a character to its essence; the startling see-all gaze of a child which cuts throught layers of feigned interest; the quiet understanding of old friends when they let one rant a self-righteous soliloquy; the solid common sense of old people; sometimes in the most unlikeliest of them all - in myself.

still, for someone who lives in words, wisdom is a rare commodity nowadays. all is dash and flourish and clever sentences. intelligent perhaps, but not wise.

one writer who is a contrary delight is Alexander Mc.Call Smith. the gentle humour - not ascerbic but sympathetic, the keen observing eye, the deft characterisation and the feel of leisure his writing brings, i have yet to find it all in another's writing, except perhaps, that of J0anne Harris. even now, i am struck by the -that word again- wisdom of his lines.

perhaps there was no real point to our existence -or none that we could discern- and that meant that the real question that had to be asked was this: how can i make my life more bearable? we are here whether we like it or not, and by and large we seem to have a need to continue. in that case, the real question to be addressed is: how are we going to make the experience of being here as fulfilling, as good as possible?

or,

we all fall in love, and some of us are sentenced to unrequited love, talking about it over cups of coffee in flats like this, with friends just like this, and oddly comforted by the process.