I watched a pretty good video from The School of Life, it’s called Wisdom. It probably doesn’t sound particularly ground-breaking but it does offer some tried and true, good old advice.
The video breaks down wisdom into a few aspects, each one of them is a facet of what wisdom is. I have summed up what I think each aspect means to me.
Aspects Of Wisdom
Realism – having a realistic understanding of what to expect in our endeavours, especially the difficulties we may face in life.
Gratitude – knowing that we are privileged and luckier than many other people in the world, be content.
Folly – understanding that we are merely evolved apes and we are imperfect beings who are capable of doing random, silly things.
Humour – having a devil-may-care attitude to help deal with the less pleasant things in life.
Politeness – knowing when to not confront others even when we disagree with them, some things won’t be solved through arguing.
Self Acceptance – accepting and acknowledging all our characteristics, not just the good ones.
Forgiveness – not getting mad at things and people knowing that they probably come from a place of suffering themselves.
Resilience – having the grit to weather the storm which is bound to happen.
Envy – acknowledging why people are where they are because of many reasons we may have overlooked, including luck will help us better deal with envy.
Regret – we all have regrets, we shouldn’t get too hung up about them.
Calm – don’t be afraid of having a boring time, sometimes a not-so-tumultuous state is a blessing, learn to live in calmness.
It turns out that wisdom doesn’t have to be something that’s beyond our reach. It’s pretty straightforward if you break it down into little parts. I think the important thing is to not be too hard on yourself. What do you think? What does wisdom mean to you?