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LuLu's Land of the Fey

All the news that bores the pants off anyone who cares.

Wednesday, April 07, 2004

Fools and Sages

So I've been reading this guy's webpage recently where he shares his philosophies on life and I've been comparing his ideas to my own ideas. He's got some interesting ways of seeing things and points out things that I might not have initially thought of myself.

For example, he says that we learn, not only from the "wise" folk in our lives (teachers, mentors, etc.), but also from the "fools" (in my case, students and the like). While this seems patently obvious, I never really gave it much thought. If I had to be brutally honest, I probably learned more proportionally from the fools than I did from the wise people.

Maybe this is because I feel that I know more "foolish" people than I do truly wise people. I know lots of people who strive for wisdom and knowledge, but in one category of life or another, they fall into foolish thinking. One thing that this guy points out (which I also agree with) is that foolishness is not stupidity, it is merely the "not-knowing better" state of being. I guess it could also be defined as ignorance.

I guess if I had to define true wisdom, it wouldn't be the absense of ignorance, because we are all only human and there is no way to know everything the universe could possibly offer us. Cool as that would be to know "everything," it's just not an option. I would say that one aspect of wisdom is about recognizing that one is ignorant of something and not being hung up on it. To be able to admit ignorance, I guess is what I'm trying to say.

I think another aspect of true wisdom is the ability to know something without the need to let everyone else know that you know that thing. One who brags about all they know probably doesn't know much outside of his own realm of comfort and knowledge. I've known lots of people who were insanely smart in one area--math, science, whatever--but who were social morons or who couldn't string together a complete sentence. Unfortunately, these handicaps didn't stop these people from bragging about all the math/science/whatever they knew. I couldn't get past the fact that they were so obnoxiously out of touch that they didn't recognize their behavior, and so I could never feel that these people were valuable resources of knowledge to whom I could go for help and information. My first thought when these people would approach me was, "Great, now I get to listen to Jethro McHick talk about star formations for hours on end while I wait anxiously for him to take a breath so I can escape to the bathroom. Yippee."

That said, I would definitly have to put myself into the fools category. I have gotten better; my social skills have definitly developed and I'm not the obnoxiously shy, offputting person I was 10 years ago (I hope). I have seen the behaviors of other fools and I think that is where I learned most of my behaviors, only in reverse. For example, one of the most frustrating things about traveling abroad (obnoxious bragging alert!) is seeing other Americans in other countries and the looks they get because of their pompous behavior. As anti-nationalist as it seems, I am always extremely proud when someone from another country thinks I'm European (usually British because, after all, my French is negligible and I'm utterly useless in any other language). It's not that I don't want to be American; I simply don't want to be associated with the way we/they act overseas.

So I'm a fool, but I'm a fool striving for wisdom.

The most wise person I know, then? Tough call, but I'd probably say that my dad is up there. He's not knowledgable of everything there is to know in the universe by any stretch of the imagination. He's not college educated--he's barely high school educated. However, what he knows, he knows in his marrow, in his blood cells, in his breath. The things he doesn't know he has no pretensions about. He's not afraid to ask for help in a situation, be it either the best way to configure a computer or how to pronounce a word. I feel lucky that I was raised by him and hope that I can be as wise as he someday. I also feel pretty psyched since he's influencing one-quarter of my son's genes; I hope that my son is just like my dad.

.: posted by amy 10:26 PM