The Way You Receive Others

I have not turned to David Brooks in a while, although I regularly read his offerings.  However, he recently shared some thoughts about wisdom.  That caught my attention because I am doing a series on wisdom.  As I have prepared to share some thoughts about wisdom, I have been struck by what a range of opinions folks have about wisdom.  Some think it comes rather automatically with age.  Others assume it is the same thing as knowledge.  And so, I eagerly read what Brooks’ take on wisdom is.

Brooks begins by referring to people who think wisdom is a bunch of words---maybe words normal people don’t have.  But this is not where Brooks lands.  Listen to him.  “When I think of the wise people in my own life, they are like that.  It’s not the life-altering words of wisdom that drop from their lips, it’s the way they receive others.”  I love that thought.  Wisdom has to do with how others receive others in their lives.  When I hear something like this, I stop to ponder whether that is true in my life.  Have the wise ones in my life been wise because of how they receive me?  I see what Brooks is affirming.

Brooks rightly points to a common perception of wisdom.  He quips, “Too often the public depictions of wisdom involve remote, elderly sages who you approach with trepidation — and who give the perfect life-altering advice — Yoda, Dumbledore, Solomon.”  His description here reminds me of my doctoral dissertation advisor---perhaps the smartest person I have even known.  His study was a huge room in the bowels of Widener Library right in the middle of Harvard’s campus.  When I headed to see him, I could feel my blood pressure elevating.

Walking through those library stacks was entering that remote land of the elderly sage.  I would knock on his door and hear this voice invite me into the den of wisdom.  He was smart---really smart.  He was an unbelievable fount of knowledge.  If there were anything within the entire 2,000 years of Christian history he did not know, I never discovered it.  But I am not sure he was wise.  And I am sure he had no common sense.  For example, his family would not even let him drive---a hazard to himself and the public!

We come to Brooks’ own perspective on wisdom with these words.  “But when wisdom has shown up in my life, it’s been less a body of knowledge and more a way of interacting, less the dropping of secret information, more a way of relating that helped me stumble to my own realizations.”  With these words, he is developing his idea that wisdom is how we receive each other.  He talks about it as a way of interacting.  

I do think most of us get better at interacting as we get older.  We have more practice, for one thing.  Some younger people do a good job, but generally they have some things to learn yet.  The other thing Brooks is affirming with these last words is the interaction with a wise person winds up not being about the wise person, but about you.  As Brooks notes, the wise person allows me to stumble to my own realizations.  I love that image of stumbling.  Life does present us with issues where there is no clarity.  We have to stumble our way to truth or insight.  A wise person aids our stumbling.

And now we can go back to the idea that wisdom is not the same thing as knowledge, although it surely contains some knowledge.  Brooks interestingly says, “Wisdom is different from knowledge.  Montaigne pointed out you can be knowledgeable with another person’s knowledge, but you can’t be wise with another person’s wisdom.”  I had never heard this from Montaigne, so that is helpful.  Brooks reflects on this and tells us why we can’t be wise with someone else’s wisdom.  “Wisdom has an embodied moral element; out of your own moments of suffering comes a compassionate regard for the frailty of others.”

I want to close by talking about change in the way Brooks addresses it.  He claims that “People only change after they’ve felt understood.”  And he adds some insight.  “The really good confidants — the people we go to for wisdom — are more like story editors than sages.  They take in your story, accept it, but prod you to reconsider it so you can change your relationship to your past and future.  They ask you to clarify what it is you really want, or what baggage you left out of your clean tale.” 

I like the idea of the possibility of changing our relationship with the past and the future.  It makes me think about the role of forgiveness.  Forgiveness is a way of dealing with our past---whether we are the one wronged or the one who did the wrong.  Forgiveness releases us from the bondage of our past.  I think the same thing is true for the future.  Perhaps wise folks are more capable of helping me hope.  Indeed, hope is, as Augustine says, the way we have the future today.  

I appreciate David Brooks’ help in understanding wisdom to be the way we receive others.  It gives me hope that I can become wiser.  I can receive others in more effective ways than I do.  It may be nothing more than taking a little more time with someone.  It might mean listening a little more.  I find that folks with wisdom somehow are able to ask much better questions than others.  In fact, most folks don’t even ask questions; they are more likely to give advice or criticism.

Let’s all become wise.  Now we know what it means.