11/7/23
Three points need to be made before discussing the wisest
person, or people, I’ve ever met and what I have learned from them.
First, there is a yawning gap between being smart and
being wise. In fact, one of the most
salient attributes of a wise person is not feeling the need to let people know
how smart s/he is.
Second, there is wisdom, to varying degrees, in
everybody. However, we often miss the
wisdom in those closest to us because we see such people in moments when they
don’t seem the least bit wise.
Conversely, we often attribute more wisdom than is merited to other
people because we have only, or usually, seen them in situations in which their
wisdom manifests itself. Probably
because these people are not the closest people in our world, we don’t get the
opportunity to see them making the ordinary mistakes and errors in judgment we
see made by those who are nearest to us.
So we underestimate the wisdom of the former and overestimate the wisdom
of the latter.
Third, what we have learned from people is largely a
measure of what we are willing to learn.
Over the years, people have dispensed great advice, and provided plenty
of examples of wise behavior, to me. Had
I followed the advice or the actions of such people, I would be much wiser
today. So people have tried to teach me
things, but I refused to learn, which shows the limited extent of my wisdom, at
least at an early age. It also shows a
lack of humility on my part. A very
wise man I once knew told me that humility can be defined as teachability,
i.e., the humble person is the person who knows s/he has a lot to learn and is
willing to learn it. In that sense,
humility is the very essence of wisdom.
So, given those stipulations, who was the wisest person
I’ve ever known? I simply can’t narrow
this answer down to one person, so you will have to settle for three.
One of those wise men I knew was my Dad, Dick
Quinn, Sr.. Dad did not have
much formal education, at least by today’s standards, but he was, as I have
said in another chapter, perhaps the most thoroughly self-educated man I ever
knew. This never-ending pursuit of
knowledge was what made Dad smart. What
made him wise was never wearing that pursuit of knowledge on his sleeve. He was a man of few words, which probably
comes as a surprise to those who know me but never knew my Dad. This reticence may have come naturally to my
dad, given the circumstances under which he grew up, but it also had to do with
his belief that he had plenty to learn from people who were better educated
than he and his reluctance to say things that might expose his lack of
education. It may have been my dad who
told me that you don’t learn anything when you are talking; if so, that is one
piece of wisdom that I completely ignored most of my life and have only
recently begun to appreciate. At any
rate, my Dad was smarter than those of his friends who had advanced degrees or
the like, so he need not have feared speaking up. In
fact, the world would have been a better place had he more freely shared what
was on his mind. But he was a cautious
man, overly cautious, really, and this was one of the reasons he was as quiet
as he was.
Dad also taught me the virtues of hard work, delaying
gratification, gratitude, and trust in God and in one’s self. He taught me not to expect anything from
anybody, that whatever one had in life was the result of hard work and
dedication. He taught me the importance
of children in one’s life and how important it was, if I were to marry, to marry
the right person. Some of these lessons
were intentional, some were not. And
not everything my Dad taught me was right.
I managed to learn many of these lessons, good and bad, and I also
refused to learn many of these lessons, good and bad. But Dad was, if not the wisest man I ever
knew, certainly the first wise man I knew and the one who, and not only because
of his role as my father, was most determined to teach me the things I would
need to get along in life.
Another wise man in my life was Bill Cowhey, who
was a mentor to me in some very rough times in my life and in some of the best
times of my life. Bill was an older gentleman
(in the best sense of that very misused word), though not as old as my Dad, who
felt it was his duty to take those people under his wing who wanted to be taken
under his wing. One of Bill’s wisest
attributes was not forcing himself on people; he only dispensed advice,
counsel, and friendship to those who asked him.
Bill was patient but driven,
always working to help, in any way he could, people who needed help. He was tireless, even late in life, in his
work among people who needed and were seeking help and was generous, perhaps
too generous, in giving his time to, often, complete strangers. This attitude of service, and Bill’s
overwhelming sense of calm and restraint, were things that Bill tried to teach
me, primarily by example, that I am still trying, however haltingly, to learn. One of the things that Bill did manage to
teach me was that I didn’t know everything.
That wasn’t easy for either of us.
Bill’s two rules of life were….
1.
Don’t sweat the small stuff, and
2.
It’s all small stuff.
I obviously didn’t learn that, if at all, nearly as fully
as Bill, or I, would have liked, but when my anxiety goes into overdrive, I
think of Bill and what he would have said, and it usually brings me down to
earth and leads me to an appreciation for all that I have, all that I will not
lose, all that Bill tried to impart to me, and all that I have to give.
When Bill died in 2018, I wrote this in his online
condolence book:
“Bill may have been the greatest man I ever met. I don't know where I'd be without his help
and guidance. He helped save my life and
the lives of countless others. His
quick wit, seemingly inexhaustible patience, and his understanding of the world
and of human nature are permanently implanted in the minds and, more
importantly, the hearts, of his legions of friends and admirers. None of us can be Bill; we are just grateful
to have known Bill.
I will miss Bill, think of him often, and pray for, really
to, him.
Thanks, Bill.”
I was not alone in my feelings; Bill’s funeral at Old St.
Patrick’s was one of the largest in memory at Chicago’s oldest continuously
operating church. Another of the
commenters on his online condolence book wrote “Mr. Chicago has left the
building.” How true that moniker was.
The third wise man I would like to note was Father
John Kinsella, a Jesuit priest, lawyer, distinguished scholar of the law,
and long-serving faculty member at Loyola Law School. Like Bill, John was with me through some
turbulent and wonderful times. He
listened when I needed someone to listen, taught when I needed someone to
teach, and made me, and many others, laugh when I needed to laugh. His perspective as both a priest and a man
who knew the streets and its denizens was rare. Our similar backgrounds…Catholic, but with a
sense of and appreciation for the Church’s shortcomings, of the same Irish
ethnicity with all the good and the bad that entails, from the same
neighborhood, alumni of the same high school…instantly attracted us to each
other. I never knew anyone, including
myself, who believed in me as much as John did. When I talked with John, I felt I could do
anything, and, whenever I came up with an idea that I thought had promise, John
was the first one to tell me to go ahead and do it as long as it was something
that enabled me to use what he thought were my considerable talents to, to use
his vague and often-used term, “help people.”
As long I was going to do something that would help people, I wasn’t to worry
about the small stuff that was holding me back and not to lose sight of the big
picture for all the minutiae and detail that were really just excuses for
inaction.
John’s rule of life was even simpler than Bill’s:
“Do the next right thing.”
Simple, but not easy.
The tricky part, of course, is knowing what the next right thing is,
and, when I pointed that out to John, as I frequently, and probably annoyingly,
did, he would break into that inimitable Irish smile and say “Pray; you’ll
know.”
John, like Bill, was a man who, out of an immense sense
of gratitude for all he had been given, felt a continuing, and joyful,
obligation to serve others. Sometimes
this desire to help was not as considered as it should have been; he certainly
followed his own advice, sometimes too assiduously, to put the fears aside and
just go ahead and do the next right thing, which nearly always involved
providing help to people who were able to convince John that they needed it,
which was often too easy. This put John
into some precarious situations, and even led to a few injuries, especially
when he got older, that drove me and his many other friends crazy. But regard
for his personal safety never stopped John from doing what he knew God wanted
him to do…to damn the obstacles and do all he could for those who needed his
help. After all, he always felt he was
living on borrowed time anyway.
I have been blessed with the opportunity to meet and to
know many smart people in my life, but, more importantly, to have known far fewer
genuinely wise people. I couldn’t
possibly begin to list them all here, but my Dad, Bill, and John stand out as
the three wisest people I have ever known.
There is a wide gulf between what they tried to teach me and what I
actually learned; I have always been a tough nut to crack due to that lack of
humility that yet another wise man tried to teach me. But I managed to pick up a little of what my
dad, Bill, and John tried to impart, and my life has been immeasurably better for
it.
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