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Life is made out of three elements: (1) the mind, the 8-hr daily sleep required to refresh the mind, (2) the body, the 8-hr work activity required to have the means to feed and keep the body healthy (only 10,000 year ago, humans survived by hunting and gathering, not by collecting a salary; some tribes in isolated remote regions practice hunting and gathering even to this day!); (3) the soul, the 8-hr buffer time Nature provides to humans, so that they can feed their souls with hope and happiness. During this buffer time, one can choose to: (1) sleep, further refreshing a mind already fresh; (2) work, usually because of a perceived shortage of satisfaction, (3) pass time, like watching TV or reading a novel; (4) exercise, to further strengthen the body in this age of pervasive sedentarism; or (5) learn, to strengthen the mind and make oneself more competitive in the workplace. Those who succeed in life are usually those who use the 8-hr time buffer to learn. Learning means more knowledge and, like a good wine, over time, knowledge transforms into wisdom. Wisdom is only attained after many years, often a lifetime, of accumulating knowledge. Knowledge without wisdom is like a tree lost in the midst of the forest. Wisdom is like a forest: meaningless without trees. It is Nature' design to give out knowledge in bits, while wisdom usually comes as a hard drive full of time.
I am 65 now, and I feel as if I have finally reached the wisdom stage. I can see things happening before they happen. Knowledge per se does not interest me any more, except in the context and as an element of wisdom. When I was young, I pursued knowledge relentlessly, without even realizing that eventually it would lead to wisdom. At that time, an elder colleague once put it succintly: "Now that I have wisdom, I have little chance to use it." That is correct. Conventional society shuns wisdom like the plague, all the while revering knowledge, at least in principle. Disappointed, a recent retiree confided to me: "I retired a couple of years ago, and now nobody seems to want my wisdom, not even for free!" By contrast, Native American and other so-called primitive societies revere wisdom first and foremost, and knowledge only circumstantially. A knowledge-based society will always make the same mistakes, because as knowledge changes, the new tree finds itself still lost in the forest. On the other hand, a wisdom-based society will always figure out how the new knowledge fits within the greater picture. Thus, a wisdom-based society is steadier, and some would say, more sustainable in the long run. My final word, without which this CLOD1 statement would look like peanut butter without jelly, is the following: One ought to listen to his/her elders, because they represent and reflect the wisdom that only time can bestow. -- Victor M. Ponce, at San Diego's Sharp Memorial Hospital on 110726 23:00 1 Cold Light of Day |