Why is Wisdom So Hard to Reach When We Need It Most?

How colors can illuminate our choices as we step into the New Year

One afternoon, walking alone through Forest Park near my home in Portland, Oregon, I became so consumed by questions about the future that I reached an intersection of three trails and had no idea which one led back to my car.

At midlife, after putting my career on hold to raise my children, I was watching them prepare to leave home. The role that had organized my life was changing, and I had no clear picture of what came next.

Standing there among the trees, I cried aloud:

“Why is it that all the wisdom I have collected over my lifetime is never accessible when I actually need it?”

Then a trail sign caught the light, and I knew it was the way back.

Looking again at the three intersecting trails, I wondered: What if I could make a map of the wisdom I had received over my lifetime—something I could see and use when overwhelmed, exhausted, or uncertain about my next step?

When I returned home, I did what I knew how to do. I took out my color markers and began to draw.

For more than 25 years as a market researcher, I had used bright, color-coded charts to help people express thoughts, feelings, and experiences they could not easily put into words. Once their ideas were visible, they could see patterns and relationships that had been difficult to recognize before.

Color already guides us. We stop at a red light, know not to peel a green banana, and follow the flash of orange that draws our eye across a Renoir. Color instructs, informs, and moves us before we have words for what we are experiencing.

I began with a circle. It became a color wheel divided into 12 pathways based on Jewish teachings for the mind, body, and heart. Each pathway held four inner qualities, expressed through a progression of color from darkness toward light.

When I finished labeling the Wheel, I counted 48 colors in all. Curious, I searched for a connection to Torah and discovered that Pirkei Avot teaches that Torah is acquired through 48 ways.

That discovery began six years of exploring the Wheel’s relationships with Torah, Kabbalah, Mussar, and other Jewish wisdom.

The placement of the colors revealed relationships among these inner qualities. Adjacent colors support balance; opposite colors activate growth. The difficult qualities are not problems to remove from the map but places from which a journey can begin.

On the Wheel, Gratitude sits opposite Rest.

I had struggled with insomnia for more than 20 years. Seeing that relationship led me to end each day by remembering the three connections I had most appreciated.

That small practice changed my sleep—and my life.

The Wheel helped me see and use the wisdom I already carried. In front of the refrigerator, in the middle of an argument, or while considering a major decision, I could see more clearly how I wanted to respond. Fear, grief, loneliness, or exhaustion didn’t go away, but seeing the larger map brought possibilities back into view.

I have watched that happen during Oracolor readings and on the 20-foot Oracolor Wheel. During one synagogue Wheel Walk, a woman stopped at Loneliness. A few days later, she wrote that the experience had helped her finally express something she had been holding back.

“I feel reconnected in a way I didn’t expect possible,” she said.

Over time, I developed the Wheel into a deck of cards for daily self-reflection. Whether drawn in the morning, chosen for a particular moment, or placed where it can be seen, each card holds a quality to contemplate and carry into the day.

This practice feels especially meaningful during Elul, the month that prepares us for teshuvah—return.

Teshuvah asks us to reflect honestly on what has been shaping our choices, where we have missed the mark, and how we want to live differently.

This Elul, reflect on the question: What do I already know about how I want to live? Choose one quality that gives that wisdom a name. Give it a color and connect it to one small action.

For example, if the quality is listening, try taking four seconds to listen to your heart before responding. If it is gratitude, recall the connections that sustained you that day. If it is courage, consider taking one step toward a conversation or decision you have been avoiding.

The color is not the practice. It is a trail marker, bringing that wisdom back into view when you need it.

The drawing I began that day eventually became Illuminated Paths, a deck, guidebook, and foldout map that use color to make Torah wisdom visible and easier to put into practice when we need it most.