Getting older doesn’t mean getting wiser. You need to put in the work to become wiser. In most cases, that means getting out there and giving it your best shot. In most cases, this will end in failure. But that’s where the ‘becoming wiser’ part starts. You need to be ready to fail and learn from it. People are not perfect and thus can’t do everything correctly from the get-go. When you fail, you are presented with an opportunity to learn from. You know what went wrong and now it is your turn to figure out why. Once you did that, you can figure out the way to do it right.
That doesn’t mean you will succeed now; you can still fail. Failure isn’t bad; it just means you haven’t got the wisdom yet to do it right. Giving up also doesn’t say that you gained nothing from it. You did achieve something; it just wasn’t enough to bring you what you wanted.
If you reflect on that wisdom and not just ignore it, then that wisdom can be used for other things later on in your life. That’s why people say that with age comes wisdom. The more you try, and the more you focus on learning from your mistakes, the more wisdom you get to gather. But you have to put in the effort. If you just wait until you get older, then you will get just that, older. You won’t become wiser from it.
Wise people are people that have done a lot of different things in their lives and have reflected on it. When talking to those people, you get a sense of profound knowledge. You feel that they genuinely understand what they are talking about and not that they are just repeating someone else’s words. Wise people are the kind that you can keep asking questions to, and they get more excited. Especially when you ask them a question that they haven’t got an answer to. As that will prompt them to think and reflect even more about that subject. Giving them a chance to become even wiser.
They don’t see the questions as an attack on their wisdom, but as a way to increase their wisdom if faults are discovered. It is as those people want to try to become perfect and are searching how they can become perfect. The questions are just a way for them to find out where the faults are. This is where a significant difference lies with the ‘fake wise men.’ Those who pretend to know it all, but just repeat someone else’s wisdom. Those people try to play perfect, and every question will be an attack on them to prove that they are not.
The real wise people are wise because they want to be wise. Because they enjoy knowing things and enjoy discovering how things work. They also enjoy helping people gain knowledge, so they will gladly answer your questions although some of them will keep their answers short as they like to continue with their work. Others overflow with joy that they found someone to share the information with and want to push as much information in the conversation as they can. The fake wise people are wise for the sake of being important. They just want attention and not the knowledge. They like to talk without there ever being a question asked. Or easily interrupt you when you speak while not contributing much to the conversation. In most cases, they are just wise enough to fool people that they don’t know the whole thing.
I hope I made the distinction between these two types of people clear enough. If you feel bad about failing because you fear that people will think bad about you. Then you are doing things for the ‘fake’ reason. If you feel bad because you feel like you let yourself down, that you could have done better. Then you are in the ‘real’ category. Reflect on why you feel that way and try to fix that problem as well.
Things get complicated if you are not merely learning a skill or trying something unimportant. Failing in learning to play the guitar and failing to perform like you usually do at a concert are two different things. Failing to play the guitar because you haven’t learned it yet, is no big deal, if you practice more it can become better. Performing at a concert and failing to play the guitar, that is a big deal. You wasted people time and money and did not deliver what you promised you would. The first example is traveling the road of wisdom, which should be intrinsic. While the second is performing a job which has both intrinsic and extrinsic values. The intrinsic part is for you to judge, but the extrinsic part is for the others to judge. If the people at the concert say you did a lousy job, then you did a lousy job. They pay you to play for them, and thus they are your judges.
Improving yourself or doing something for yourself should always be intrinsic. If it was extrinsic, then you really didn’t do it for yourself but to please someone else. You would go as far as the other wants you to go or as far that is needed to fool the other. With intrinsic actions, you are your own judge, fooling yourself is just part of being an idiot, which is about as far as you can get from being wise.
Don’t fool yourself that you are doing things for yourself when you are doing it for the other’s appraisal. You will not gain wisdom with that. You will just get old without getting wiser. At the end of your life, you will just be an old person with past glories. You will feel bad because you have lived other people lives instead of yours.
Live your own life. Take responsibility for it. Make mistakes, learn from them. Make your life better by reflecting on the bad parts and improving it. Don’t ignore them; they are part of you. You can’t ignore your foot when you stepped on a nail (or lego, those things hurt way too much). You fix the nail problem by treating your food. The problem can be prevented from occurring again by looking where you step or by cleaning up the workplace. Not by staying in bed and doing nothing all day. The nails will still be there. So don’t ignore your life when it stepped onto trouble. The trouble is not going away without your effort. Learn where the trouble is, find out why it is there and how to remove it. Reflect on it so the next time you see trouble coming. You fix it before it becomes trouble.
You won’t be able to fix all the trouble before it finds you, but you will have far less trouble to work with. Your life will be far less troublesome. Giving you more time and energy to gain more knowledge to fix even more trouble. You would even enjoy it and hunt for more trouble. You would try out new thing knowing it will cause trouble. But you do it anyway because, for you, it is just a new opportunity to learn from. The knowledge will be your shield against trouble; you will feel secure and have a high self-esteem. There will be nothing left that can bring you down. Trouble doesn’t find you; you see the trouble before it got a chance to arm itself!
When you get old, you will be a wise person that knows a lot of ways to fix troubles. You would have lived your life to the fullest. You will not have regrets of not doing what you wanted, because you did it all the time. You wouldn’t even mind getting older, as that is just another trouble that can be overcome. While it is not yet possible to stop aging, you can prevent the problems from having a disruptive impact on your life. You will be one of those old people that are just too happy for this miserable world. Because for you, this world holds a lot of challenges that won’t bring you down but will help you make the ideal life for yourself. Break up trouble into small pieces and learn how to disarm it and put the knowledge in your toolbox. Grow that toolbox every day!
Another day, another challenge, another opportunity to grow!
