This article is by Julie Zhuo via her newsletter - The Looking Glass
A friend celebrated his 40th birthday the other day. He said, you know, the older I get, the more the cliches seem deeply true.
Cliches like, The days are long but the years are short. Or Having less is having more.
In my teens and 20s I rolled my eyes at statements like these.
They seemed like a soda can’s empty calories. Everywhere and cheap. No nuance, no inventiveness. The easiest thing to serve up when you don’t want to put in effort.
But now, when we utter them to each other — swallowing back the lump in the throat at a child’s birthday party, fingering an exquisite dress before walking away, offering gentle words to a partner after a hell of a week, or mari-kondo-ing the shit out of January — we glimpse the profundity of these so-called words of wisdom, as clear and essential as water.
What I failed to realize back then is that the words are merely containers.
In my teens, the containers were shallow, filled with black-and-white plotlines and youth’s arrogance.
But year over year, these containers gathered more memories. Hues of heartbreak. Textures of love. Mistakes and their sharp aftermaths, slowly eroding the edges of hubris.
The containers became fuller. And speaking their words felt like uttering prayers, like drinking in the past itself. Exquisite and complex. A prized wine growing ever finer.
That elixir is wisdom. How I wish we could drink of each others’ collections!
Oh, but we try. To weave that wisdom into our stories. To convey it in our art. To capture it in our words. Humanity’s best attempts become today’s cliches.
But all of these attempts are still containers, containers of all shapes and sizes, bouncing in our minds.
They have their value; after all, our minds are like houses — more likely to be tidy with a larger collection of containers.
But do not mix up the containers themselves with the wisdom inside them.
To my young-hearted friends: read and learn. Reflect and absorb.
But never forget: Wisdom is life itself.
Sometimes, there is no more advice left to give.
Sometimes, you must simply live.
The original link is here.
