The Wisdom Writers: Plato, Rumi, Thoreau, Aurelius, Solomon

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What is wisdom? Have you ever really considered the question? There are many definitions but the one I like best is this: wisdom is knowing how to live one's life well. You might think this knowledge is easy and common, and yet the opposite is true. Confucius once said:

To know that we know what we know, and that we do not know what we do not know, that is true knowledge.

Our problem in modern life is that we suspect we know too much. We think we know how to live well, yet few of us really do. The first step in acquiring wisdom is to abandon what we think we know, for what we think we know hasn't yet produced in us the meaning and passion our hearts truly crave. The great Persian poet, Rumi, said:

Conventional opinion is the ruin of our souls,
something borrowed which we mistake as our own.
Ignorance is better than this.

Solomon, in the Proverbs, said similar:

There is a way that seems right,
But in the end it leads to death.
Proverbs 14:12

Take a moment of honest self-reflection. Ask yourself if you're really living your life to the full. Do you have passion and meaning? Do you wake up each morning excited to meet the day and joyful to dive into the richness of this human experience? If the answer is no, then wisdom wants to guide you deeper still. It is better for you to abandon what you think you know, than to cling to the way that seems right but is only producing death. The first step of wisdom is to abandon the wrong thinking that hasn't brought you to meaning or passion. The philosopher, Socrates, is famous for saying:

The unexamined life isn't worth living

The most important role of wisdom in our lives is to dispel the mistaken beliefs we've always held true, those things which promise happiness but never deliver. If you would learn wisdom, then take the first step. Abandon the way that seems right that has only been producing death. Understand that you don't really know what you think you've always known. Only then, once you heartily and joyfully accept the fact that ignorance is better than self-deception, will you be on the path that leads to wisdom and ready to discover the wealth of what life really has to offer. I'll leave you with the immortal words of Robert Frost:

Two roads diverged in a wood, and I,
I took the one less traveled by.
And that has made all the difference.