Knowledge and Wisdom

If you are born with this deep-rooted desire to grow from within, you need to set your priorities right. Your aims, ambitions, all need to be clear as following closely on the heels of what you want to do in life along with the experience that gets attached to it all.

Knowledgeable v/s wise
When you grow, you grow in two ways, one in terms of volume and the other in terms of qualitative knowledge. I have often noted that there is a thin line of difference between being knowledgeable and being wise. It’s seldom that you would find a combination of both while coming across a great number of people. When you grow in experience, you may or may not understand the need for it, until you’ve learnt from it. I’ll explain...

Assuming you are trying to be the best in your field and you bump into a profession that was never yours in the first place. You may indirectly learn from it. But that does not mean that you faced all that you did in this short span of time; that meant nothing to you. You might have wanted to be a painter, it doesn’t matter then that you spend a little time into painting billboards and hoardings. After all you’d probably gain some knowledge that you may otherwise be devoid of. And it is this experienced meshed learning that makes you wise.

So what does any experience entail? Your experience, gives you knowledge; it empowers you with those things that you get to know. Instead by accepting the facts that you aren’t familiar with, you are enticed into acquiring information about those areas. This in turn leads to growth. "I don’t know" and "I am not sure" are mere words that make you search for more. Once you’ve reached this stage growth occurs automatically. Acceptance of what you don’t know, in short, leads to growth. Your aims and aspirations are steppingstones of knowledge; following the paths that are not covered lead to growth and thus towards wisdom.

You have experienced your body to some extent, you have experienced your mind to some extent and you have experienced the world to some extent. In some moments, you might have also experienced the energy which makes this body and mind function. Beyond this, you have not experienced anything at all. Everything else is just pure, unadulterated imagination. Whichever way society has taught you, your imagination functions in that way. Look into what is there in your experience and what is not. And all that is not there in your experience you accept as, "I do not know." This is very, very essential. Otherwise, your whole life may pass off in pretensions.

A Search for the unknown
An important aspect about this growth is that it leads to an unending search for the unknown. This in turn may make you move mountains. Archaeologists for example are an unsatisfied group of people. It is the search for the unknown and the uncouth and non-discovered things in life that make up their ambitions. Human life has always been a search for understanding the unknown. The reason why we focus on the past is because while making us go through the experiences that the historical figures went through, they also gain knowledge and knowledge makes you a much more mature and wiser person. Half-baked knowledge leads to an inflated ego. More importantly, the search and zeal for knowledge makes you dig deep.

This is one subject that builds on your patience; your imbibing powers and a combination of these makes you wise. In a situation where you search is on; you’ll notice that the human mind is not completely satisfied with his results. There is a tingling feeling of asking for more, making us Oliver Twists of this generation. And interestingly, while you are involved in this search, there comes a point in time where you are not really interested in getting to the conclusion. The journey towards gaining knowledge is so overpowering that the search just goes on.

Probably God made us in this fashion so that whether it is God, or truth, the search just goes on. This includes searching within oneself, around you and searching for areas unknown. This may be one of the reasons why understanding God and his message to the world is a search in itself, a search that makes you gain knowledge and allows Wisdom to filter through!