Small Fortunes

Wisdom is determined by experience, not just by age.

A fortune cookie I happened to break open somewhere around seven years ago said that.  It's the one fortune that stuck with me, despite the extensive collection of fortune cookie slips in my wallet.

I was an arrogant child.  And an arrogant teenager.  Hell, I'm still arrogant, but hopefully significantly less so.  I always thought that I was special, unique, that I was in every way more experienced than anyone around me.  To a point I know that it's adolescent egocentrism.  But it goes beyond that.  I thought that everyone was beneath me.  It's thoroughly embarrassing by now, but that's the sort of person I was at the time.

Looking back on that child, I sometimes wonder how the hell I ended up here.  I think I have a pretty good idea of what (or who, as the case may be) finally knocked me off that high horse, thoroughly unintentionally, but I'm glad it happened.  I think I acquired more wisdom in discarding this ridiculous notion that I know everything than I ever could have walled in by pride as much as I was.

It's odd for me to think of the things I've been through.  I like scars.  They tell stories.  I like the record of the past that they convey.  And sometimes I feel like I'm supposed to teach the lessons I've learned.  In less than a week, I will be faced with someone who has never done this before, who is probably hoping that I'll be helpful and insightful.  But I've never been good at teaching.  I learned everything from my own mistakes, and even though I'm not sure I should be, I'm proud of it.

I'm proud that I could fall so far down and break so many things but still come out okay in the end.  Because I am okay.  Even if I don't believe it sometimes.  But I can't explain how I got here.  I can't explain the things I've learned because they're not things you can put into words.  You can try, but you'll never really get it.  The things you learn by living you don't explain or pass on, they're things you feel.

Life is preparation.  Every piece is preparing us for the next.  Every failure and every success is molding and shaping you to face the next challenge.  And it's different for everyone.  I can no more teach someone to live their life than I could teach my dog to eat with a knife and fork.  All of the wisdom that I have accumulated is my wisdom, and I don't say that to be selfish.  But everything I have learned and become applies only to me.  Every lesson in my life was specific to the person I am and the specific circumstances I was in.

I used to think I'd grow up to write a memoir.  To explain my successes and failures, to outline how I dealt with life, so that perhaps someone who read it could learn from me.  I always enjoyed reading memoirs, so this occurred to me as a logical next step, even if it wasn't a bestseller, even if it never got published by any big company.  I felt that it had to be written.  But I'm starting to understand that it doesn't.  Because to anyone else, my life is a story.  Perhaps in some places it intersects with theirs, but for the rest, it doesn't matter if it's just fact or really convincing fiction.

My "secrets" of success are nothing to anyone else, because they only apply to me.  My triumphs and crushing defeats bring lessons only to me for having lived through them, fought against them, and looked back on them.

I guess what I'm trying to say is that I don't want to let people down by giving faulty advice.  By saying things that might have helped me but could very well do more harm than good for anyone else.  And I'm not sure why that bothers me right now, but it's been gently nagging for some time, and I think it needed to be said.