SEARCHING FOR WISDOM

 I spend enormous amounts of time searching for all sorts of things which, in the end, work no miracles for me and make me no happier than I was before. It’s a useless search based on broken ideas about what’s important in life. I seem to see treasures for the taking in all sorts of material things, from sweet houses beside rivers to small, spicy cookies, and too much of my time is taken up in the empty-headed search for them. I’m like a hunter hoping the next moment – the next cookie or kind word or washed and pressed white shirt – will bring the kind of contentment I’ve been searching for. I seem to so easily forget that this counterfeit contentment is as insubstantial as the slight winds that sometimes sail along our streets. It comes with a careless unconcern for my welfare, and then leaves as quickly and easily as leaves let go of trees in the fall. Happiness made of material things is simply haze and smoke, and disappears as surely as daylight does each evening. What doesn’t disappear – and I wish I could write this inside me somewhere – is wisdom, and it’s as easy to find as leaves falling in November. Wisdom waits for me in all the moments of all my days, and all I have to do is hold it up in the light and love it sincerely. It doesn’t dwindle or take flight or die. In fact, it unfurls in unending ways once I accept it into my life, and I can do that by simply bowing before it and being humble enough to hold it close like the treasure it truly is.