Proverbs 17:24 Meaning Wisdom Is Before the Face of One

Truth is never far off, waiting at the edge of the world to be hunted down; it stands directly before the mind that is willing to see it, near as the present moment and plain as a face already there. The seeking that ranges to the ends of the earth is the mind's own evasion, scanning the distance so it need not look at what is close, because to look near is to change teachers now. Understanding is only this willingness to stop searching outward and let the eyes rest where love has been all along.

Wisdom stops being a distant prize the instant the mind agrees to look at what is in front of it.

Eyes: the mind's chosen direction of seeing; cast to the ends of the earth they flee the present, rested near they meet the truth that was always before them. Ends of the earth: the far distance the fearful mind searches to avoid the close and simple truth, the elsewhere where nothing has to be faced now.

Scattered attention feels like ambition and produces nothing, because nothing grows that a person will not hold in view.

Depth converts looking into having, and depth requires staying in front of one thing past the point where it stops being interesting. The fool suffers from an excess of interest, aimed everywhere and refreshed daily, never held long enough for anything to mature. Each new horizon erases the last one, and the erasure is total: work abandoned in March does not exist in April.

Understanding sits within reach of the one who put it there and kept it there through the boring middle. That costs every other interesting thing, which is the part nobody wants to price. A life run on wandering eyes finishes rich in beginnings and poor in anything completed, and the person living it will usually blame timing.