by Garrett Anderson

Created on: November 08, 2009   Last Updated: December 02, 2009

Wisdom is the sum total of the human experience. It is all that has been learned and all that has yet to be learned. Wisdom is the ability to perceive situations and intuitively select the right course of action. Wise people see, hear, and feel. They have the ability to evaluate and remember. To admit mistakes and strive not to repeat them. The wise are determined to learn when others have stopped. They make an earnest attempt to understand another person's point of view or perspective. Wise people can apply solutions to situations that baffle others. Wisdom is a constant learning experience that begins at birth and may continue after death and beyond. Because wisdom is so many things, it is safe to say that it is an equal opportunity experience. Wisdom is guaranteed to no one. For that very reason, it is safe to say that age alone cannot make you wise, although it cannot hurt. The older you are, the more likely you are to experience a situation that a younger person might not have been exposed to with all other things being equal. There are some significant skills, abilities, and traits that wise people tend to possess and apply. Some very wise people are scattered among us and it can be difficult to predict their appearance. A common characteristic among the wisest people is the recognition that the school of wisdom offers no diplomas and the best students never graduate.

Common among wise people is a willingness to learn and a commitment to never stop learning. Wise people tend to look for and discover new things. Sometimes they stumble onto ideas and inventions while trying to solve a problem that others simply don't notice or stop to evaluate. Wise people see an opportunity to learn in almost every situation during the course of their lives. They gather information through all five senses and they gather emotional information intuitively. The wise remember and store what they have learned. Wisdom then becomes the ability to call up that stored information and retrieve it. To apply it to a situation and plot a logical and agreeable solution.

As wise people learn, they discover that premature and ill conceived judgments hamper their ability to evaluate a problem. Preconceived and faulty beliefs become a significant barrier that compromises an honest appraisal involving all of the relevant issues of any given problem. Wise people make a commitment to evaluate all potential evidence before arriving at a conclusion. They accept the possibility that their preconceived

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