What are you going to be when you grow up? This is the classic question addressed to children, and often, partly in jest, to adults. I’m not going to be silly about it: I AM grown up. Way grown up! Now the question is: What have you done with your life? or What have you become?

Many people in their later years can and do answer it by naming a role or a profession or an accomplishment. They have specific skills (I was an electrician. I was a teacher. I was a homemaker and a volunteer. I was a judge.). Although some people speak of their roles in the past tense who are not getting paid for them any longer (if they ever did), the skills and accomplishments and the labels that go with them do not end with aging and retirement. Whatever you were, you are, and it’s still useful and good.

At this time in my life, my assessment of what I “became” when I grew up is rather, well, fuzzy. Professionally speaking, I managed to make a living as a commercial writer. Does that make me a writer? Well, kind of. But there are vast areas of writing that don’t belong to my skill set: I never wrote a novel, a grant proposal, a Wiki post, a screenplay, a theological treatise, or advertising copy that made news on the Super Bowl. Although I’ve devoted most of my existence to writing short lines of artistic language, to declare myself a poet sounds both grandiose and wimpy. Where’s my Pushcart Prize, let alone my Pulitzer, for all that? Thousands of people write poetry, possibly everyone.

Is Writer what I have become? Might as well say Talker, as that is what I am doing here and now. Indeed, I have a memory, or perhaps an impression, that my mother used to say I was born talking, and had to become a writer when I couldn’t get anyone to listen to it all. So I’ve decided to broaden the idea of writing or talking even more and call myself, past, present, and future: Philosopher.

The dictionary provides a number of nuances to this word. I’ll pick the one that avoids mention of scholarship, logical reasoning, and analysis in favor of: One who pursues wisdom.

Yes, I think that’s it. I am a Philosopher. Life brings wisdom through many channels, and I think I’ve at least kept my eyes open. A book I’ve recently picked up holds delightful new insights from Thich Nhat Hanh, whose writing is deceptively childlike, deeply wise, and wholly refreshing: Going Home: Jesus and Buddha as Brothers (1999). The pursuit of wisdom requires a boatload of books, family and community, spiritual inquiry and practice, an open mind with discernment, and love for what the universe holds for the evolution and delight of humanity. I hope I’ve been actively part of all those things all my life.

Shall I leave you with a recent poem to assert my credentials in that part of my life? This one was written at the invitation of a fellow docent at the Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art. If you live in Kansas City, you can view the actual object in the America Indian gallery. Hope it prompts you to find another way to your own wisdom.

  
HUMAN HEAD EFFIGY JAR
Late Mississippian Culture 1350-1550
 
for A.L.
 
Imagine if a light were set inside
this ancient figure of a human head.
Could these deep eyes alive and deified
connect us with the wisdom of the dead?
Whatever consolation we might seek,
this intercessor only comes to hear:
the lips are sewn. The image cannot speak.
Perhaps some golden gift adorned each ear.
 
We ponder lines incised upon your face,
mysterious symbols that we do not know,
divided now from your ancestral place.
Yet in the flicker of that inner glow,
we share the wonder of the mind within,
life made of common clay, our human kin.
  
Barbara Loots