Wisdom According to Karyn Hurt

When I was younger I thought that wisdom was only something that was granted to someone in their old age, who has a head filled gray. But in this past year A Greater Source outside of myself has proven me wrong! Wisdom comes from your life experiences and the lessons that you have learned in the progress. 

My grandmother told me when I was around the age of 12, “Snooks (her nickname for me) don’t be too quick to curse your troubles and trails, because there is always a blessing of knowledge that is to come from it, that in part will help you when you are older and have to use the wisdom that you gain from prior troubles in your current situation.” At the time I just brushed it off like ok grandma, I never gave it a second thought, until I got older and I realized what she meant by that. 

When I was 26 I was diagnosed with liver cancer and now I am 27 and still am fighting this thing. Yes, there were times when I was at my lowest, that I couldn’t see the light of day. I couldn’t do what I want, couldn’t go where I wanted to. I was put on bed rest for a few months in those moments the words of my grandmother came to mind. 

Grandma is right!  You don’t have to be old to obtain wisdom, nor do you have to be religious. Wisdom is the knowledge of a “Greater Being, or Source” outside yourself that has the control. There in the moments of my weakness and feeling sorry for myself I clutch onto what my grandmother has said.  I needed to be still, completely still.

 This experience has taught me that you can’t rush things in life, and things that you want to accomplish you must take your time. We are in age of things being fast, fast food, fast cars, fast phones, faster internet, everything fast, fast, fast. We also have a lot of distractions that keeps our mind filled with clutter and trash that keeps us mentally, spiritually, and morally flustered and unbalanced.

But my lesson was when your move to fast, that’s when you make big mistakes. 

I was cancer free for almost 10 months, but I was told at my last checkup that I was going to have to do this fight again.  I wasn’t taking my time in my recovery, I was ready to get up and move and work on my life with my husband. But by me rushing and not allowing my body to really heal it caused me to do this task again. I didn’t get my lesson. Granted it isn’t as bad as it was almost a year ago but never the less it still is cancer and I still have to fight.

See you don’t have to attend a church service to believe in something, nor do you have to quote scripture in the bible, to gain wisdom and understanding. You just have to be willing to take the time and assemble your life according to what will give you peace and comfort. That means that you may have to get rid of things that drag you down and things that cause anxiety that will set you off balance. 

The time of being still wasn’t just for me build a stronger faith in “The Supreme Being” but also building a better understanding of self, of what I do and don’t want, or even taking the time to see what Karyn really needs from Karyn.  

Wisdom is just a sense or knowledge of an outside force. Whether you would want to call it God or your Spiritual guides or even your own spirit in connection of self, whatever it is that entity has your best interest. You may not see it right away. It may take some time to get it, however once you have the knowledge or understanding of that source, you may find things that you face in life a lot easier to handle and deal with.  You may find yourself a lot less stressed. 

I believe that I am taking this fight with cancer a lot easier than before. I have the understanding and the wisdom to know that there is something outside of myself that comforts me, and also that there are things that are out of my control so why worry and stress over it when there is only 1 thing that I can do and that is to learn from my trouble, and transfer my lessons that I have learned to the problems that will accrue in the my future. 

See wisdom isn’t limited to old age, but rather it is gained from life experiences and life chooses. My grandmother wasn’t talking about something that she had heard, rather of something that she has learned in her 90 years on this earth.  I got it now! She was saying, you have to go through life in order to obtain wisdom. Never curse your troubles because you may lose a valuable lesson that will help you in further trails.  At some point in time everyone would need something to believe in, something greater then themselves.

Karyn Hurt is a striving historian in African-American history and a two-time Cancer survivor.