The Magi

The idea that, over the years, one slowly grows wise isn’t widely accepted in our culture. Walk the corridors of your local nursing home, and you too may reject the notion. Clothe a modern Socrates in a urine-soaked diaper and stick him in front of daytime television, and folks won’t ask him for advice.

 Still I always liked the idea that, no matter what I’m losing in vigor, I’m gaining in accumulated knowledge and the ability to make use of it. So now, in bleak December toward the end of a nasty respiratory illness and fresh from the first indignities of an outrageously expensive root canal, I contemplate the strengths I may be expected to bring to the table. 

I suspect not even the Chinese, who are very big on the wisdom of the elderly, can claim that every person whose skin is wrinkled and whose hair is white lets fall from his lips the philosophy of a sage.   

It seems to me the deterrent to growing wise isn’t stupidity, but the sin of sloth. When you’re twenty you read a few books, listen to some lectures, talk to your friends, and decide you’ve got just about everything figured out.  How easy it is to sail through your senior year and decide your education is complete.  You have your ideas, your tastes, your learning, and you stride fourth into the world looking down at lesser mortals. 

It may get you through your first round of job interviews, but if you’re paying attention, you’ll notice there’s a wider array of points of view than you considered.  There are more lifestyles from which to choose, and a mountain of unread books you’d best get started on. 

After giving up thinking how smart you are, you may find you have other traits that are a bit self-centered.  There are illusions to be given up, fears to be faced, and something called humility that wouldn’t do you any harm.  It seems like an enormous job of work, and you’re right; it is.

This is the moment when the sin of sloth is so tempting.  How delightful it is to know it all, and how uncomfortable the idea that improvements have to be made!  So you choose. Either you cling to your knowledge, your ideas, and your self-image, or you’re dissatisfied with the person you are. 

This is the moment when wisdom is needed, and either you have it or you don’t.  If you choose the path of change, the job is never done. You may come to a point when it seems you’ve altered enough, but life has a way of presenting new challenges.  Maybe it’s a job, or a marriage, or the birth of a child. 

The need for flexibility never ends, but it gets easier with practice.  You develop a taste for it.  It no longer is it enough to take the same vacation every year; you want to see the world.  You look over the menu for foods you never tasted before. 

As you grow older you’re required to let things go.  Doing eighty on the Interstate becomes a bad idea, and so eventually will driving at night.  Climbing mountains is just a memory. 

When does wisdom arrive?  In a sense you have to have it most of your life.  Your first decision not to rest on your laurels required it.  So did the choice to forego the authority of fatherhood, and pay attention to the needs of a child. 

But if you’re asking when wisdom is simply there and you possess it, the answer is don't hold your breath.  The Magi of the Bible – the Wise Men – weren’t  know-it-alls, they were seekers.  They didn’t sit on their thrones and bask in admiration for their wisdom; they followed a star on an arduous journey and lay down their gifts in ambiguous circumstances to further an end they couldn’t see. They made the decision to set out. This is what it means to be wise.