Wisdom

Recently, I posed the question about whether your truth might be embedded in another language. I’ve long been fascinated by the Japanese concept of Wabi-Sabi, partly due to my love of their hot springs (onsen) culture. This led me to buying, renovating, and reopening the Kabuki Springs and Spa in San Francisco’s Japantown nearly two dozen years ago.

I’ve been reading academic Dr. Dilip Jeste’s recent book, “Wiser: The Scientific Roots of Wisdom, Compassion, and What Makes Us Good.” In his book, he offers the reader one particular study that gives evidence that wisdom is more correlated with spirituality than it is with intelligence.

I’m not sure of the exact date yoga went mainstream in the western world, but I know when Yoda went mainstream: 1980. Thanks to his starring role in Star Wars, Master Yoda helped us see the magic of practically applied wisdom. And, of course, Luke Skywalker would never be the same.

In the summer of 2019, I was invited to Procter & Gamble’s Cincinnati headquarters to give a speech on creating more intergenerational wisdom sharing in the workplace. It was part of their annual Signal conference. I wrote about my visit in this past blog post, and the P&G team wrote about my speech here.

What a treat it was to have TED speaker Ashton Applewhite (and her colleague Virginia Hamilton and husband Bob Stein) join us in Baja for Sabbatical Sessions the past couple weeks to converse about how we end ageism. Her book “This Chair Rocks” and her online clearinghouse Old School are foundational to our process of creating “cognitive liberation” around the subject of age.

Some of you have asked me, “How can I cultivate and harvest my wisdom beyond what I read here on Wisdom Well?” I’ve heard this question from members of five different generations as young as those in their teens and as old as a few people in their eighties.

Karl Marx’s “Communist Manifesto” urged workers of the world to unite: “You have nothing to lose but your chains!” Today’s rally cry is a shout out to older workers, and it’s loud and clear: “We have everything to gain from your brains!”

I asked a friend who has crossed 70 & is heading towards 80 what sort of changes he is feeling in himself? He sent me the following:

2020 may have been a year of radical shocks, disruptions and dissonance. It was a year of endings. Much of our normal way of life ended. Our ability to travel, hug each other and feel safe being in public ended. The entire globe was thrown into a transition of massive proportions.

Breathing new energy into old ego patterns can sometimes ‘ventilate’ habitual entanglements that we have built up over a lifetime. Ventilating these built-up patterns is important for disentangling complex ego defenses that have in fact served us throughout our life, however, without the ability to self-reflect, our own minds can become an obstacle to wisdom and growth.