by Elizabeth M Young

Created on: April 10, 2010

Wisdom, in the fullness of the term, involves many concepts. The first is to not confuse the ability of a person to remember and to repeat learned concepts with the ability to actualize, use or incorporate them into a system of understanding that adapts the knowledge so that it is functional in new environments and situations.

The second concept is the understanding that wisdom comes to and grows in the mind that is open to learning new things. Wisdom does not easily come to the mind that is resistant based on either the insecurity of knowing far too little or the arrogance of knowing far too much.

The third concept relates to the first one as wisdom develops when knowledge is appropriately used to asses a new situation and to apply the correct action at the correct time. Much of life presents situations that are not identical or even anticipated. Wisdom includes the ability to observe, assess, think, then to act when the human being is challenged by something that is different or new.

A person can be wise from indigenous or cultural knowledge, or knowledge that is passed down through the generations. Many teachings in life, such as child rearing, health care, farming, cooking, managing a home, running a small business and dealing with an extended family come from indigenous and cultural knowledge.

A person can have gained wisdom from life experience, where a person who has the broadest experience in the world has had the opportunity incorporate the knowledge and wisdom of a wider variety of people and to apply them to a wider range of situations and environments.

Well travelled individuals who have lived for a while in different places will have gathered wisdom that the most frequent of short term travellers will not have had the opportunity to gain. But the frequent traveller will have wisdom that can only come from years of frequent travelling.

Wisdom is the individual's collection of knowledge that has been proven successful when applied to a variety of internal and external life challenges, goals and accomplishments. Great wisdom is based in the premise that the person who is open to learning  and applying wisdom throughout their life is the person who continues to get wiser.

Wisdom comes from formal, informal, ancestral or indigenous and experiential education that can be proven or disproven to be useful over time, making the process a lifelong one of challenging that which is entrenched in order to know if it is still valuable. Wisdom is never static, as even the greatest mind will begin to fail and to deterioriate with great age.

Wisdom, then, is a moveable, changeable, growing, then declining feast of thought and of application of thought that is a lifetime process and not a static entity.

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