Wisdom is What Works

This juicy morsel comes from the incomparable Clarissa Pinkola Éstes, heard on a book-on-tape while driving to an appointment today. I had to stop on the side of the highway to write it down so it wouldn’t slip away. This lean definition of wisdom came to her in a dream, summing up in four words the subject she’d been researching for years.

It’s often the simplest of phrases that penetrate my busy, noisy brain:

Mind the Gap.

Breakdown, breakthrough.

As within, so without.

Poet Robert Southey wrote, “It is with words as with sunbeams. The more they are condensed, the deeper they burn.”

With the New Year and another wondrous birthday all unfolding this first week of 2012, I could ramble on and on about what I’m carrying into these new days, what I’ve left behind, and the quirky, eclectic wisdom that helped me find the clarity to both safeguard and unload.

Yet Clarissa’s dream message and its ripples are with me still, so I’m moved to stay brief.

Flexibility. Laughter. Stay with feelings. Wonder. Intuition. Nature. Close the gap.

Here’s to sunbeams, and whatever works. Here’s to embracing it when it comes.

photo by Barry Shapiro