Being Wise Means First Being Stupid
Wherein I explain my personal tagline: Remember that anything here that passes for wisdom comes from surviving my own stupidity
Hang around me long enough and you’ll hear me say it. Usually it’s in response to someone who’s trying to give me a compliment about how “wise” I am. I run a coven. I’m a third degree High Priestess. I teach and lead rituals. Given that assemblage of roles in the pagan community, if I’m doing my job right, sooner or later someone’s going to want to say something nice to me in that vein. And I am honored when anyone thinks I’m worth of the word “wise.”
But I am very quick to tell them: “Thank you. And know that anything here that passes for wisdom comes from surviving my own stupidity.”
Yes, it’s a canned line, and somewhat amusing. But it serves a VERY important purpose. It keeps me off the pedestal.
You see, I’ve seen first hand what happens when someone gets too comfy being on the pedestal. I’ve seen it when someone who leads and teaches in this community (and in other communities, too) starts to buy into the smoke people blow up their ass. I’ve seen what happens when someone’s ego needs them to be on that pedestal, and the lengths that a person will go to in order to keep the position they believe they ought to occupy. I’ve watched people fall off the pedestal. And that tumble not only hurts the person falling, but it ends up inflicting a lot of collateral damage as they go down.
Irene Glasse recently summed up a lot of the issues around being on the pedestal and why we need to break the pedestal. I agree with all of what she said, and I’m not going to try and restate it all here. Bottom line is that if you choose the mantle of teaching or leading ritual or otherwise putting yourself at the front of a room in our community, people will come to think things about you that are rather inflated, and they will try to put you on the damn pedestal. And the pedestal is dangerous.
My tag line — that everything here that passes for wisdom comes from surviving my own stupidity — is not only helpful in this regard, it has the added benefit of being true.
Human learning breaks down into two types of processes. The far easier and less painful way to learn is to observe and absorb. That’s reading books or watching or listening to instructions from others. It can even come from watching other people learn things the hard way and deciding not to make that same mistake.
But it is the second process, direct experience with a thing, that lets us learn our lessons in an indelible way. The child who puts her finger on the hot stove will never again make that mistake, because she’s burned her finger and that burn teaches more than any admonition from a parent not to touch. In much the same way, many of the most important things that I know, I know because I screwed up.
I know that if you’re trying to have a difficult conversation with someone, you need to be respectful. Because the surest way to hurt someone is to laugh at them for something they’ve said. I learned that during a conversation with my Dad, when I had to look into his eyes, filled with hurt, after I laughed at an opinion of his that I disagreed with.
I'd give anything to have never done that to someone I love. It was hurtful and thoughtless. I am grateful that my relationship with my father was and is strong enough to withstand my doing something that stupid. And having been that stupid, and suffered the consequences, it's hopefully a safe bet that I won't do that particular thing again. Had I been wiser to begin with, I might have avoided it in the first place, but I wasn't. And I have to own that.
The other beautiful thing about my tagline is that it changes the narrative around mistakes and shame. While certainly, mistakes are embarrassing, and no one likes making them, the fact is that everyone makes them. And most of the mistakes we make are honest ones, not done out of malice or nefariousness, but usually more thoughtlessness and ignorance. When you can view your mistakes as serving the purpose of promoting growth, they become less a source of shame.
None of us gets through this life without making mistakes. Anyone who tries to tell you they are infallible is a damn liar, and you should not place any trust in them. Anyone who won't own their mistakes, or who tries to pretend their mistakes don't matter, is dangerous. I don't want to anyone to take away from this the idea that mistakes are meaningless, or that we should make them willy-nilly. Mistakes can hurt people, including yourself. And that pain isn't a small thing, particularly the pain you cause to others. To discount that is to lack empathy and undermine community. It's important as you reframe the narrative around your mistakes to not discount the impact your mistakes might have on others. When you fuck up, and by that fuck up you hurt others, it's on you to apologize and make amends if you can. That part of your narrative around mistakes should never change.
That said, the ability to look at your mistakes not as devastating, shameful things, but as valuable opportunities to learn and grow, is a game changer in terms of both self-awareness and confidence. People expend lots of emotional energy on monitoring their own actions and interactions, policing themselves vigilantly to make sure that they don't make any mistakes. This kind of anxiety can be crippling. Being able to instead focus on just doing the best you can in the moment that you're in, knowing that if something goes wrong you can extract the lesson, make amends and figure out how to go on and do better, is something of a liberation.
Being able to acknowledge your mistakes makes you better able to take risks. You're able to go up to that person you want to talk to but who makes you nervous. You ask for the things you want, because you're not as frightened of rejection. A mistake is no longer a world-ending, self-annihilating proposition. It's just something that happened. You will deal with the consequences, learn from it and get past it. And when you've finally moved past it, that mistake becomes wisdom that you earned, and is now part of you.
The other thing to keep in mind is that it's not like there's some sort of place that you reach where you've acquired so much wisdom that you never make any mistakes again. You will always find ways to screw up. You're human. That's part of the deal. The only thing you can hope for is that you don't keep making the same mistakes, that your mistakes are new mistakes, ones you don't already know about and don't see coming. You will always make mistakes. You will still be stupid, and from that stupidity you will become wise. Until you aren't again.
Anything here that passes for wisdom comes from surviving my own stupidity. Whatever you perceive as being "wise" in me, started out as me being stupid. So while I appreciate the compliment, I'll stay off the pedestal, thank you very much.
Blessed be, witches.