Many people seem to think wisdom is something that comes out of the Bible; they even call it wisdom literature. It is something that comes with old age because living gives experience. We associate in our myths wisdom and advanced age with all those long white beards (and yes in our myths it is often old men that have it, not old women.)
Wisdom is a lot more than personal experience. It is one of the most intellectual of all our skills because we don’t have to learn it as much as imbibe it. It is part and parcel of accepting what others say is the case, as well as seeing for oneself by intuition and analysis. It is one thing to know at fifty whether a persons is being honest and using one’s own experiences to judge, it is quite another to know whether honesty is worth pursuing and what it is.
And it is all about knowing. One of the greatest repositories of human wisdom in the world is her literature. Here are the words and thoughts of thousands of people who have lived in every age and culture. They resonate with sheer depth of living. These are not stories to be thrown away but people to be understood.
In these books you exist though you are not named.