This is a slightly augmented version of a conversation I had
with somebody, starting with me saying:
‘I hate the ageing process.’
‘Why?’
‘Because all it does is take things away from you.’
‘No it doesn’t. It gives you something back, too.’
‘What?’
‘Wisdom.’
‘Oh, that. Can you eat it? Can you smell it? Can you listen to
it? Can you play games with it? Can you make love to it? What the hell use is
wisdom?’
End of conversation.
I’ll tell you what wisdom is good for. It’s good for
explaining why you lost. It’s good for helping you to understand that the
reason there’s an empty space inside you is because you and the other party never
got close enough to defeat the fear. And the reason you didn’t get close enough
was because both of you were too frightened – frightened that the other one
would do or say something that would hurt too much and take you beyond your
pain barrier. And so you walked the path of mutual mistrust and never held
hands.
The problem with wisdom is that it tends to work only in
retrospect.
Here is wisdom?
--------------------------------------
Somebody wrote a half decent poem through my fingertips last
night. I don’t know who it was – I was half asleep most of the time. I would
post it here if only I could find an alternative to the word ‘berate.’ That
wouldn’t be fair to the Bronx.
No comments:
Post a Comment