Wisdom Defined by Me

Wisdom taught me to "borrow" from Google and adjust it

Simply stated, it is whatever works best for you and is developed over time as you find out what works and what really doesn’t do so well.

My more recent growth in wisdom has come from the judicial use of Google and sorting out what works for me and what I really don’t think is much help. So if I don’t know what I need to know, I just “google” it to try to find a better solution to my problem (do an Internet search).

Take this Facebook post as an example of someone who will eventually get wisdom.

…I broke my phone last week and lost a lot of my contacts, could everyone please send me a text with your name so I can add you back? 

You would think that after a number of times losing this information that one would create a backup in case of some mishap. I know I did this a lot in my working days for contacts since you make a lot of them in the sales and marketing field. And I didn’t have a cell phone since they weren’t available on the open market as yet. So I also carried some spare change to use a payphone in case of some emergency. My contact list was saved on an early days’ computer and was simply a dot matrix printout of that information when I finally got my own computer. Up until then, the sales management groups only wanted everything hand written. They had not developed wisdom in this matter as yet and some never did. They were mostly full of a lot of themselves, and possibly other things. Some did have wisdom and I paid attention to their advice.

Here are some other items that show I developed wisdom and I would like to share them with you now.

I made a butcher block for my various kitchen knives and custom cut it to hold the different blade widths while I assembled it. Now that is not the wisdom I gained here but it was sort of some. I got wisdom when I realized that all blocks at the time stored the knives against the blade edge. Well since I started to hand sharpen all my knives myself, I soon realized that a better way to store the knives is to simply turn them around and let them rest on their spines so the edges stay sharper much longer. The knife companies just marketed another version of the knife block/knife set that had the knives resting on their sides now. They, after all, were in the business of selling more knives.

The best toilet bowl cleaner for my money turns out to be plain old ordinary white vinegar. It disinfects and breaks down lime build up in the bowl and it is so cheap compared to the packaged and over marketed versions in the toilet bowl cleaning section and it seems to work much better. Try a couple of cups and let it sit for a while before you use the brush on the bowl. If that doesn’t work so well try 3-4 cups the next time which is an example of how one develops wisdom.

Why is it that older folks seem to have more wisdom than younger folks? Well that one is really a no-brainer since the older folks have made more mistakes and corrected for them since they have been around a lot longer than younger folks. It is known as experience and not useless information that a younger folk once told me my head was full of (useless information). I think he was full of something else but since I gained wisdom I didn’t say that to him. He was, after all, the owner’s son. 

I learned a lot about wisdom working at a golf course. There are a lot of really bad golfers out there and you only got better if you changed what wasn’t working. It never ceased to amaze me that so many of them just kept on doing the same old thing on just about every shot and their game never improved. I, in my infinite wisdom, decided to take some lessons and so my game immediately showed significant improvement. So I learned that you can gain wisdom from others who have gained their own wisdom.

Just stay away from advice from those that are full of something else. That is wisdom in its purest form.