What is Wisdom?

   In the course of my readings this week, I came across the notion that wisdom is simply not taught in schools in the same way that more commonplace skills are taught, such as problem-solving, inductive reasoning, and so on. I am often lead to wonder, however, what is 'wisdom', and is it really something that can ever be made into an object and achieved? And then I realize too that I am not altogether even comfortable with the term 'wise', because in essence, it always contrasts with a different term, such as "ignorant" or "foolish". I actually wonder, is there even such a distinction between wise and foolish when wisdom has been fully realized? This is what I had arrived at today.
     I really suspect that my apprehension has to do with the way thinkers in this area typically reduce the question of wisdom to a series of dichotomies: rational vs. emotional, objective vs. subjective, wise vs. foolish, etc. I wonder whether such an approach really arrives at authentic wisdom, because it just sounds like the repetition of an ages-old struggle to divide the world into two distinct categories, where one is considered good and the other 'not good'. I have to wonder, is such an approach even able to define wisdom? In a sense, the reason wisdom is so elusive is that it is simply too vast to operate under such categories. Nor does a wise person necessarily 'strive' for wisdom the way a car-collector might strive for a vintage Cadillac. Wisdom seems to involve a level of experience that has nothing to do with even the words 'wisdom' and 'ignorance'.
     Of course, in conventional circles, one still needs to use such terms as wise/ignorant, good/bad, rational/emotional, etc. but my sense is that a wise position encompasses divisions and moves beyond them in a dialectical process. For instance, if we reject something in ourselves very much and then want to replace that rejected quality with something else, the wise move would be not to follow that desire at all. Rather, it would be to embrace both the rejected and sought-for qualities, while going beyond them. If we look at the plays of Shakespeare, do we see Shakespeare trying to side with the good guy and banish the bad? In fact, one hardly ever gets a glimpse of Shakespeare's opinion about his characters, because Shakespeare the author never seeks one character and rejects the other. He simply reveals and reflects them, warts and all, for everyone to see, and he often does so humorously and lovingly. There is a certain transparency about Shakespeare's writing which makes it non-polemical. Can we then say that he writes wisely?
      Another way to put it is that wisdom is able to see what works best for living creatures, without judging a creature for not living up to those 'bests'. It is like this: if it were not for the 'bad', how can there be 'good'? Should we not feel a little grateful for what we refer to as bad, because of its ability to point us to what is good? In the same way, why banish any quality if it is really working within a totality that embraces many qualities?