Wisdom

Warning: this next sentence is bawdy. In an episode of The Simpsons, when Marge was about to board a ship, Smithers said, “'I think women and seamen don't mix." Of course, double entendres have been with us for centuries. Even Shakespeare used them in “Romeo and Juliet” (Google “bawdy hand”).

What would be your ideal title when you’re 50+? I was connecting with a friend who I’ve had the pleasure of working with both at Joie de Vivre and Airbnb and she was telling me about a recent conversation she had with the “Resident Wise Woman” Deb Ryan of the Tahoe Truckee Community Foundation (scroll down to the second row of leaders to find Deb).

“The unfolding saga of life on all levels is one of constant transformation, constant changing of form,” says author, artist and playwright Julia Cameron. Nature illustrates this principle in countless ways. The chambered Nautilus, for example, is a deep-water mollusk that builds a spiral-shaped shell for a home.

One of my greatest regrets is never meeting management theorist Peter Drucker who died just before his 96th birthday in 2005. Why do I admire Peter? Let me count the ways:

The human brain has been called “the world’s most complex pattern recognition system.” Pattern recognition is considered a proxy for wisdom, the theory being that if you recognize a pattern based upon past experience, you can forecast the future.

As we mature, many of us become attracted to the idea of cultivating the wisdom inside of us. This is a wonderful and noble pursuit. And yet there’s an essential part we might miss. Cultivating anything - whether a crop or something else - isn’t enough. We must harvest, too, if anyone is to enjoy the fruits of our labor.

The two most prominent pieces of advice Dad gave me in my teens were “marriage is a compromise” and “keep your options open.” For a young mind, this wisdom seemed to be at war with itself, but with a few years behind me now, I’ve come to realize that paradoxes and juxtapositions are the most interesting parts of life. Jung suggested maturity was about “holding the tensions of the opposites.”

As I mentioned before when I riffed on Wisdom Well with my friend Seth Godin for a week, my number one piece of advice for cultivating and harvesting wisdom is very simple. Take an empty diary or journal, write “My Wisdom Book” on the front or inside the cover and every weekend create a few bullet points of what you learned that week and how it might serve you in the future.

Last night was a full blown, full moon show here in Northern California. Driving through the hills of West Marin the moon appeared as a huge pumpkin colored disc on the horizon. Every detail of its surface magnified into startling clarity.

Knowledge is knowing a tomato is a fruit. Wisdom is not putting it in a fruit salad. Philosophers focus on wisdom. The rest of us trade in knowledge. My favorite modern-day philosopher is my friend Alain de Botton who started the School of Life.