#238: Bumping along to wisdom

Are you in a hurry on the path to wisdom? Read bumper stickers. Here’s one about experience. ‘My old man shouts, ‘You should listen to my 58 years of experience!’ But what he had was one year of experience repeated 58 times.’

That sums up the risk you take in assuming that experience automatically improves with age. Old experience might not help as new things happen. The trick lies in understanding which old experience has practical application today.

Without practical understanding, you won’t have the savvy to see patterns in all the information around you. And if you don’t see patterns, you can’t make sense of critical events.

Practical understanding comes from direct experience. That’s why experience is defined as the practical acquaintance with facts or events.

And wisdom? Wisdom is the ultimate outcome of an accumulation of practical understandings... if you are lucky enough to survive your own direct experiences.



I’m JamesMcIntosh@nonsenseatwork.com

Copyright: 2008 James Henry McIntosh

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