A humble, accomplished man shares a bit of wisdom

'The desire," says Dan Gottlieb, "came from something inside of me that grows stronger and stronger as my life feels more and more fragile: I really don't want to take anything with me. I want to give away everything I have before I go."

His new book, The Wisdom We're Born With: Restoring Our Faith in Ourselves (Sterling Ethos. $14.95), suggests that wisdom doesn't belong only to people and institutions outside us. We've got it, always with us, if we'd only be mindful. The book is a bid "to look through all the closets" and give away what he's seen and learned. He's reading from Wisdom at Head House Books in Queen Village on April 8 and at the Norcom Community Center in Northeast Philadelphia on April 22.

Psychologist, family therapist, former Inquirer columnist, and author (Letters to Sam), Gottlieb, 67, is perhaps best known as a radio host. His is among the most familiar voices on Philadelphia radio. Since 1986, an aeon in broadcast years, he has hosted Voices in the Family, now airing on WHYY-FM (90.9) at noon on Mondays, repeated on Sundays at 6 p.m.

He earned undergraduate and graduate degrees at Temple, began his practice in 1969, did postgrad work at the Family Institute of Philadelphia, with more recent training at the Penn Program for Mindfulness. But if you know "Dr. Dan" at all, you'll know that at 11 a.m., Dec. 20, 1979, he suffered a broken neck in a car accident that paralyzed him from the chest down. He lives in a wheelchair. His struggles and triumphs are prominent in his practice, his radio show - and in The Wisdom We're Born With. Even when feeling good, he's feeling fragile.

"Look," he says by phone from his home in Cherry Hill, "For 35 years I've been sitting in this stainless steel perch, being an observer. It's been my ongoing wish to answer the question, heart and soul, of 'What does it mean to be human?' Not that I have any answers; all I have are observations."

Not exactly all. The sunlit, eloquent stream running through Wisdom is the notion of the "divine spark" of wisdom. It's something Gottlieb says he's discovered repeatedly in his life (as recounted in Wisdom), his training, and his work with patients. In the teachings of the Cabala, the spark is infused in us before birth and accompanies us through and beyond life. Buddhists and Christian mystics revere something similar.

This built-in gift can guide us, Wisdom teaches. We adults forget we have it and have to relearn it. Gottlieb knows kids have it: "I watch infants and toddlers, and they know how to experience joy, love, faith, and they giggle easily. A baby who's crawling, and picks up a key on the floor, will notice its color, its temperature, its ridges, the sun glinting off it. And we adults don't. But those things are still there. And the power to see it, the access to that wisdom, is still there."

In his therapy and teaching, Gottlieb writes, "I believe I have never said one word to anyone that they didn't already know." Again and again in Wisdom, as people explore crisis or challenge, they discover they have what they need. If it's not "the answer," not that overrated concept happiness, it may be perspective, acceptance, understanding, a way to continue.

Len is dying, afraid and angry. But, in his final hours, surrounded by everyone who loves him, he sees he has what he's always wanted. A woman is starved for security - then realizes she's always had it ("I feel like I came home," she says). A woman surveys the end of her marriage and swears she will never again "abandon" herself. All have attended to the spark.

In a chapter titled "What Now?", Gottlieb writes, "We can go on, and with very few exceptions, we do. We might feel as though we don't want to, but given the stark choice of life or death, we almost always choose life."

Shelves sag with self-help books. How to Find Happiness in X Steps. What separates Wisdom f rom such glib listicles is a pervading humility. "I don't have the competence to tell other people how to live their lives," Gottlieb says. "My skill set is telling people what they've always known in a way they can hear it and own it."

There's also gratitude. "What has saved me again and again are the people I have worked with," Gottlieb says. "They have rescued me and taught me. When someone has asked something of me, that's when I've been saved."

One hates to ask, but here goes: How are you feeling, Dan?

"At the moment, I feel great. At the moment. But it truly is at the moment. My body feels very fragile to me."

Yet Gottlieb says (and writes in Wisdom) he is grateful for this body, partner in such travails, such adventures: depression, infections, operations - and the awesome miracle/mystery of healing. "Trauma doesn't go away," he writes. The task is to figure out what to do now. And we usually know.

Gottlieb, aware many might find his life a string of misfortunes, says: "You know, I am so very grateful for everything I have. Almost every day, I look around and I say, 'Why me? What have I ever done to deserve everything I have? All this love in my life, all this joy?' "

"Wisdom is a kindly spirit," says the biblical Book of Wisdom, and that kindliness radiates in Dan Gottlieb's new book of Wisdom.

215-854-4406 @jtimpane

Readings
Dan Gottlieb: "The Wisdom We're Born With"
7 p.m., April 8, Head House Books, 619 S. 2d St. Free. 215-923-9525, www.headhousebooks.com.
Also:7 p.m., April 22, Norcom Community Center, 10980 Norcom Rd. Free. 215-613-1070, www.nccfun.org.