“Wisdom is the right use of knowledge. To know is not to be wise. Many men know a great deal, and are all the greater fools for it. There is no fool so great a fool, as a knowing fool. But to know how to use knowledge is to have wisdom.” — Charles Haddon Spurgeon
Through this life’s journey we meet people from every conceivable orientation and environment. Those of us that have the ability in selective discernment over a period of years, through our interactions with people on every level of our growth, glean a great deal of information. We all process that information differently, for different reasons at the various stages in our experience. Have we ever really experienced a knowing fool through the vagaries of our different stages of life? Have we ever been one? Of course, ego may never allow us to admit it, but we undoubtedly crossed that threshold many times, unconsciously, without giving it any thought at all. And therein lies the fool. Herman Hesse suggests another way of thinking about this . . . “The true vocation of man is to find his way to himself.”
Very often we are our own worst enemies. What exists today for ourselves, families and loved ones is an advancing electronic technology that although enhances communication to a point, leaves in its wake the growing incapacity or interchange of face to face conversation, enhancing ideas, creativity, individual gesticulation, acknowledged awareness of spontaneous human energy, thought or the willingness to use this technological knowledge for a greater purpose. Discovery of that greater purpose is part of the wisdom a select few may possess in order to alter the bent of that knowing fool.
Life continues to be, and always was a practicum of choice. Acquiring knowledge through decades of experiences, placed carefully within the vastness in our consciousness of being, leads to wisdom beyond comprehension. Awakening to our essence is the first step in the revelation of who we are, and that for some may never come to fruition. So be it. Our life choices may embrace an unlimited plethora of opportunities beyond our imagination. The danger lies in our willful blindness, in stepping over innate wisdom in the misuse of knowledge and never knowing the difference. How we live our lives, and touch the lives of others is in its basic sense a wise choice in the right use of knowledge as Charles Haddon Spurgeon illuminates with these simple words . . . “A good character is the best tombstone. Those who loved you and were helped by you will remember you when forget-me-nots have withered. Carve your name on hearts, not on marble.”
Will anyone care or notice how many voice-mails, texts, e-mails, face book entries, twitter or snapchat replies, instagram messaging, updated versions of I-Phones, tablets etc. was compiled by any of us in the next 20-30 years? Everything will change, nothing will stay the same. What in the last analysis will endure? Frances G. Wickes suggests this . . . “The art of living is, in its essential meaning, a development and transformation of the power of inward choice. Its products are fashioned in the workshop of the soul.” JLR