Wisdom is a clear sense of increasing idealism and purpose (things as they should be) as well as a sensitive, practical approach to realities (things as they are).
I think about my education sometimes. I went to the University of Chicago for a while after the Second World War. I was a student in the Department of Anthropology. At that time, they were teaching that there was absolutely no difference between anybody. They may be teaching that still.
Another thing they taught was that nobody was ridiculous or bad or disgusting. Shortly before my father died, he said to me, “You know – you never wrote a story with a villain in it.”
I told him that was one of the things I learned in college after the war.