I Said Goodbye to a Friend

I said goodbye to an old friend yesterday.
I wish I could say it was a goodbye to caffeine or procrastination but it was not an addiction or bad habit I needed to let go. It was a funeral; the funeral of a dear friend's mother whose cookies I had eaten, whose pool in which I had swam, whose house felt like a second home, who always had a hug for me and squeezes for my kids. She will be missed.

I haven't seen her in ten years but time and space collapse a bit when friends gather to share memories and mourn a bit with one another. Her passing represents a continued passing of the old guard. I remember when she was my age, I remember when my own mother was my age. It is sometimes difficult to grasp this. For if I truly recognize this, I must also understand that I will someday be my mother's current age - if I am lucky.

"The great thing about getting older is that you don't lose all the other ages you've been." ~ Madeleine L'engle, Author of A Wrinkle in Time

Wisdom is more than knowledge and greater than age. It comes through instinct, experience, and a significant amount of failure. So..., it would stand to reason that wisdom does come with age. There may be those who are born with an innate ability to assess a situation or calculate the right response and others who glide through issues with the greatest of ease but true wisdom? This can only be gained through life education. Trial and error. Hit and miss. Joy and Sorrow.

From which side of the "and" do we learn? Do we learn from the trial or do we learn from the error? Worth considering and worth investigating. Perhaps we learn from the "and," learning to gracefully move from one side to the other. Realizing that without sorrow, how could we possibly comprehend joy? Honesty, truth, doing good, belief, hope, endurance, integrity, listening, and open to learning more: these are characteristics of wisdom. Seek them.