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| "Ah-ha! Now I have more questions..." |
I was drinking a Yogi Tea the other day with some friends. Yogi® writes inspirational quotes on the string paper, and we enjoy reading them. The ceremony goes: talk and laugh until the tea has cooled enough to sip. Only after taking a sip, may the quote be read. Once read silently, it should then be read aloud and discussed.
On this particular day, my quote was "Wisdom becomes knowledge when it is personal experience."
Ah-ha! Now I have more questions and feel further from understanding. Excellent.
Knowledge has never been the real focus of my pursuits. Nor has wisdom. I want understanding. I'll spend hours, weeks, researching and gathering knowledge if it will lead to understanding. But once discovered, it's the understanding that sticks with me, not the knowledge. (This has a tendency of making it difficult to share that understanding with others, I'll say.)
I'll spend an entire summer skateboarding, but once I understand the mechanics, I lose interest. I've spent years practicing latte art; now that I understand it, I am bored. I don't seek to perfect the skills, only practice until my mind grasps them.
Are these practices wise? I'm thinking not.
There's a correlation between knowledge, wisdom, and understanding. There's also a contrast. The urge to pursue these contrasts and correlations has been growing. I need to understand them, because I want to understand wisdom. Thus, I share the rest of this post not because I necessarily want you to read it, but because it's a piece to the puzzle that, to ignore, would lead me to incomplete understanding.
