This I Used to Believe

Important dates for 200.

1066.

What is the Battle of Hastings?

14 letter words for 1000. 

Sartre. Despair. Synechdoche, New York.

What is Existentialism?

Bible stories for 800. 

Simple Solution. Cut the baby in half.

What is the Judgment of Solomon?

Are you following me?

My mother makes fun of my aptitude for trivia that will only ever appear on Jeopardy.

When I was little, I used to pray for wisdom. I used to believe that wisdom was a gift that only God could bestow on the most endearing of human beings. In my small bunk bed, I would silently obsess over the Judgment of Solomon. I would desperately pray for God for the same wisdom he granted the king. The wisdom for making choices. The wisdom to change and influence. 

I think sometimes that my insatiable appetite for knowledge is fueled by a small parable.

Yet, it is only a small piece of the puzzle. A quiet enthusiasm for something that I still feel is far beyond my reach. Wisdom is somewhat immeasurable. If I had prayed to be pretty, I’d at least know what I’d been granted through thoughtfully showered compliments and a propensity towards pageantry. No one compliments wisdom. It is a thankless job. I doubt that mother was thankful that a king offered to cut her baby in half. But I guess in this case, the end justified the means. A scary, scary thought.

To me, wisdom feels like a crystal that is left to cultivate in an insulated super-saturated solution of knowledge. I am on a quest for that crystal.

So in this quest, I consume. I probably consume more than is worth consuming. I read. I read unabashedly and without real restraint. I read things that can’t be unread. I examine. I write about what I examine. I obsess. I underestimate and over explain every single thing. I explain it again when you forgot to ask me to.

This year, I realized my greatest fear. It manifested itself one lovely Monday afternoon as I stood in front of a little over 100 of my peers lecturing on black theatre. I was terrified of one thing. Strangely, it was not a fear of looking stupid or the glazed over look that occupied the eyes of many of the students.

Here I was 22 years old, armed with literacy and terrified of not being understood.

I then realized that this fear is at the heart of many of my smaller anxieties and neurosis. It is something that has plagued my thoughts my entire life. It means a constant rehearsal of hypothetical conversations in my head.  It means ending 80% of thoughts with “Does that make sense?”

It all needs to make sense. It all needs to descend from a place of wisdom.

I realized that for at least 15 years, I have been terrified that God didn’t answer that one prayer.

Today, I think I will pray for faith.

-les