The cradle of wisdom

I've been meaning to talk about wisdom for quite some time. I always had difficulty with it, since I've been called both wise and stupid, so I thought I'd give it a go at trying to figure out exactly what people mean when they call someone "wise" and what it entails.

From the get-go wisdom seems incredibly hard to define, mostly because it's a subjective opinion whether someone is or isn't wise. Being called wise could also be said by those with less intellect about those with higher intellect, but that's pure speculation. What I really want to try and pinpoint is how wisdom can be identified, or how it reveals itself in a person. That's why my approach will be to try and look at it from different angles and see if we can adequately apply a "wise" tag to something. Feel free to add your own in the comments if you feel I've missed something, or if there are other situations in which a person could be considered wise.

The first way I know you can be wise, is by simply having experience. If you know what's going to happen, then you have the wisdom given to you by foresight, as you can predict what will happen again. An example of this would be a village elder who tells the others when to plant and when to harvest their crops. He would know the best times, because he has seen it happen before. He will also be able to advice on weather, and what to do with too much rainfall or a drought. In this capacity, the wisdom is "hard earned" if he didn't have anyone to teach him. If he was alone it could have been a "bitter" experience, since he may or may not have made a mistake and had to learn from it. He could've planted at the wrong time, and thus had no crop to harvest. But he could've also been passed on the knowledge by a previous elder, and seen it happen just as he was told, in which case what he had learned was reinforced by his experience. Therefore having foresight is extremely applicable to everything, because if you can guess what will happen in the future based on what you know, you can be relied upon for advice and, indeed, wisdom. This type of wisdom, of knowing what's going to happen in the future, is very practical if nothing else.

The next way that springs to mind is the wisdom gained by tempering your emotions. Controlling anger, limiting envy and jealously and responding to a threat in a calm and collected manner has often been seen as wisdom. By giving in to your emotions, you run the risk of overreacting or instigating hostility with someone else. Practicing self control isn't easy and takes a lifetime to master, but those who have learned to stay calm in a storm are the ones who are most reliable and likely to lead us safely through the turbulent waters into a safe habour. In order to control yourself in this way, you would have to have done quite a bit of self reflection, because in order to control anything, least of all yourself, you have to see it for what it really is, and that means seeing all the flaws in your own person. You would have to put yourself in situations or expose yourself to things you know full well you are not good at, and you would have to act against your "nature" and control your reaction, be it fear, anger, jealously etc. This type of wisdom by tempering your emotions has both practical and "spiritual" qualities. Practical because you would make a great diplomat when facing other people, and spiritual because you'd be more at peace with yourself when you've made yourself both your own marble and sculptor.

In the same line as "control", you have the wisdom to say the right things. Have you ever had a conversation where you thought up the perfect reply later taking a shower? Thinking back on it, you run through the conversation in your head and say to yourself "How I wish I had said that"? Of course you have, everyone has, and the wisdom to say the right thing at the right moment may seem like a simple thing to do, but it's very difficult in nature. I think it combines well with the previous kind of wisdom, to control your own emotions, because when you're calm it's much easier to perceive what people are after and be able to see through their intentions. I suppose this would be called rhetoric, and it was something that was practiced a lot in ancient Greece. After all, if you had the right ideas, but were a poor speaker, the audience would go for the person with the wrong ideas but excellent ability as a speaker. Besides engaging in discussions and seeing them sort of like fist fights but with words, I also believe that the right word at the right time can move hearts. Being able to say the right words of encouragement at the exact moment that it's needed is wise indeed. In this, you can change a person for the better or give them the motivation and strength they needed to push through and carry on. As such, the wisdom to know just the right thing to say is a powerful tool to stir hearts and reveal lies. I'm sure the practical applications of this are obvious, as for the spiritual, I believe you would first have to have experience or self reflection enough to encourage and debate well. So I think it's a good tool to make use of your spiritual knowledge, and not necessarily the main way to gain it, though you will obviously earn experience with humans if you debate or try to encourage them.

The last thing I can think of for now is the wisdom to act the right way. It's very similar to how you can say the right things, but here "act" is more a question of what you do. Picture a man helping the weak in voluntary work. He's doing his best and giving his strength to those less fortunate, and I think everyone would look upon such behaviour and think it is good. Helping others when they struggle, giving when you have excess and leading by example are all excellent ways of how to show wisdom by acting the right way. We remember these types of people fondly. Take Mother Teresa, for example, a paragon of charity who helped, and still helps through memory, people from all over the world. Such people are people we look up to and aspire to be. These are the people we think of when we say "If only the world had more of you, it would be a better place". Acting in the right way can come easily to some people, but if you are not by nature such a person, you will have to practice. No better way than doing something like "one good deed a day" to get into a rhythm, and some people who start doing this keeps doing more of it. But it goes without saying that acting the right way takes a lot of time and effort, selfless effort that doesn't necessarily give you any rewards, so for the greedy mind it can lack merit and seem stupid. I think this type of wisdom is the easiest to understand, because it is easily recognizable when a person does good things as it really stands out. The practicality of this is trying to make the world a better place, and I think spiritually you would find a lot of peace within yourself as well knowing you've made a difference for someone else. You do not need to save the whole world, but if you save one person, you will have saved the world for them.

Now that I've talked a bit about different types of wisdom, how to recognize them and why I consider them wise, I would also like to talk a bit about how to acquire them. While I touched upon it a little bit in each example of wisdom I gave, I feel the best way to start with any type of wisdom, is to be reflective and look at yourself and the world around you. If you are observant, and willing to accept that you are faulty, flawed and imperfect, you can begin trying to better yourself. And if you look at the world around you and see that it is faulty, flawed and imperfect, you can begin trying to make it a better place. It sounds easy, of course, but it's tremendously hard work, and I don't expect anyone to do it easily except for those who are blessed with talent and good nature. As such, wisdom can be a very personal journey as well as a very social activity, since I've touched on how you can affect your environment and society in every type of wisdom. This surely means that if you're observant, you can learn just as much from others as you may learn from getting to know yourself better. A lot of people have been in the place you've been before, and just like with any learning, you can "skip" experience and learn directly from the source, which would be a person who has already gone through it in this case. Such is our education built upon the pillars of those who came before us. If you refuse to walk in the foot steps of others, you can almost certainly be prepared to face bitter experiences, where your failures becomes your teachers. This is, in my opinion, both foolish and truly enlightening, as it can give you a profound understanding of yourself and what it means to be wise, while at the same time you have to toss yourself headlong into situations where you will fail, and might hurt yourself.

In conclusion, it seems to me that wisdom is a quality of using knowledge to yours, and others, advantage. It means to take control of a situation in a calm and collected manner, and make sure a situation doesn't get out of hand. It means to see through the lies and deceit of others, cut straight to the truth and duel eloquently and elegantly with words, while also being able to lift people up with encouragement. And finally it means to act in a beneficial way for not just yourself, but for your community and those around you, and make the world a better place with your actions.

To end my blog, I'd like to quote Confucius on how to acquire wisdom: “By three methods we may learn wisdom: First, by reflection, which is noblest; Second, by imitation, which is easiest; and third by experience, which is the bitterest.”

Thank you for reading, and for your patience, and I'll see you in my next blog entry. And in previous fashion, I'll share a little bit more about myself. I've never fallen in love, which in turn makes it hard for me to see how people can be so fond of each other, and I struggle with the concept.