by Mason Freeman

Created on: August 24, 2010   Last Updated: August 25, 2010

Wisdom is a trait in which an individual has the ability to use knowledge, experience, talent, and common sense without the need of being self indulgent, while passing on their knowledge and experience in the form of answering questions or solving problems that they are faced with in a logical manner. An individual who is wise will not make a careless decision just to receive positive feedback from the public nor to satisfy his or her own objectives.

Self indulgence often times is the determining factor as to whether an individual has a lot of wisdom or just has a lot of experience. The wise individual will share his or her wisdom without being selfishly objective where as the other individual with the same background will share the information with a twist to make his or her personal beliefs seem more valuable to the audience. A wise person can pick up on self indulgence and still be able to pull the needed information out of the text or conversation without the need to reply to the unwise with their own personal beliefs.

Knowledge is something that is learned. Whether an individual is self taught or taught by an experienced person or institution. A person that cannot be taught and cannot teach himself will never have knowledge, and without knowledge a person can not be wise. Experience is similar to but not the same as knowledge. In order for one to have experience a person needs to have knowledge and must have ample time to practice the knowledge that was learned previously and during his or her work.

Talent and common sense is an internal and personal thing.  A person can be given guidance to develop talent and common sense but, the individual has to be able to develop these traits on their own. These traits are also the factor in how much time an individual needs to sufficiently qualify him or her as having true wisdom.

With that in mind, wisdom does not necessarily come with age; although the more time an astute individual has had to process and experience the information, the more wise the individual will become. That is not to say that a young person cannot be wiser than older person. If a talented younger person has had more exposure to a specific subject matter, he or she may indeed be wiser in those areas than an older individual.

For a person to have true wisdom he or she needs to possess all of these traits; knowledge, experience, talent, and common sense. He or she must be able to bring these traits together and also be able to do this without the need for self indulgence. This is the true meaning of wisdom.

Learn more about this author, Mason Freeman.
Click here to send this author comments or questions.