I want to talk about wisdom for a minute because I had to contemplate this lately when I was asked to step into something that I didn't feel fully prepared for.
And keep in mind,
We don't align with things that we aren't ready for.
Keep that in mind.
So this isn't about expertise,
Perfection,
Being fully healed.
It's about wisdom.
I think a lot of people will disqualify themselves from sharing what they know because they think I'm messy.
I'm triggered.
I fail.
I fail.
Who am I to guide anyone?
But here's the misunderstanding.
Wisdom is not the absence of struggle.
It's what you've learned inside of it.
Every one of us reaches certain levels of clarity in different areas of our lives.
Maybe you've learned how to regulate your nervous system.
Maybe you understand boundaries.
Maybe you've dealt with childhood patterns and wounds and you've cultivated deep compassion.
And then you enter a romantic relationship or you get rejected or you feel abandoned and suddenly you're reactive like an infant,
Triggered,
And you think,
See,
I knew I wasn't involved.
But growth doesn't erase humanity.
It just makes you more aware of it.
The problem is we tend to pedestal people who speak clearly,
Who've articulated something well and we project onto them that they must have transcended the human experience,
Which is not possible.
And then we see their flaws.
The spiritual teacher loses their temper.
The leader falls short.
Some video surfaces of somebody being messy and it feels jarring to our system.
Not because they're human,
But because we forgot that they were.
And when we put someone in the role of a God or a flawless person,
We set ourselves up for disillusionment and we set them up for an impossible standard because we're all in the process,
Every single one of us.
You can be deeply wise about mindfulness and you can still be triggered in love.
You can teach boundaries and you can still struggle to hold those boundaries with someone you care about.
You can guide people through grief and you can still fall apart when it's your own.
That does not invalidate what you know.
It simply means that you're alive.
Wisdom is layered.
It unfolds.
It deepens.
It humbles you.
And the humbling does not cancel that wisdom.
It actually refines it.
So you don't have to be at the finish line to walk beside someone.
You can only guide people as far as you've gone and that's enough.
There's always going to be another layer,
Another pattern,
Another blind spot,
And this journey does not end until we do.
So instead of asking questions like,
Am I perfect enough to guide?
Maybe the better question is,
What if I learned and who could that help?
And on the other side,
Be careful who you put on that pedestal.
Let people be human.
Let them evolve.
Let them be imperfect because the moment that we allow that,
Two things can happen.
We stop disqualifying ourselves and we start offering compassion when others fail.
We are all in some way baby humans just learning how to be conscious in this body,
In this life.
Every journey has value.
Every journey contains wisdom.
And every person at some point has something very real to offer.
