As a kid, I always prayed for wisdom. Growing up in the church, the story that always left the greatest impression on me was the story of King Solomon. I guess I’ve felt kinship to him ever since I was little; I’ve always felt like I was powerful, wise for my years, and - with tongue in cheek - susceptible to utter failure. I was more right than I like to admit, especially in the failure department. People say that recognizing how little wisdom one has is the first step towards being wise. It is.
I am a persuasive person, very religious, and very contemplative. I filter everything for what I can learn from it. This has been priority one over family, faith, and material wealth my entire life. Unfortunately, it led me to a plateau. Over the years I built up a pretty large cache of wisdom, and found myself awkwardly trying to share it with others. I quickly learned the curse of people with good advice: it’s not my job to tell people what to do. Wisdom cannot be passed from person to person, like they do in Lowry's book The Giver. It is an experience, and that is only ever personal. I found this hardest to accept when I saw people doing irreparable damage to their lives and the lives of those they loved. I felt like I was failing them somehow. For all that I knew, I had nothing to use my gifts for outside of my own decisions. My life was selfish, spent on knowledge without external application, and thus void of meaning.
So I decided to bring the meaning back. I searched for something to do with the one talent I seemed to have, and bumped into a 60 year old man at my church. He taught me and invaluable lesson: life is an adventure. He explained that his turn in life was used to empower people. It was then that I realized that this is the purpose of wisdom: to empower. The wise use what they know to facilitate the dreams of others. I do what I do because I want to empower people to do what they want to do. I think this is my station in life, and I find fulfillment and meaning from it.
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