Wisdom

        "Know Thyself."

         Socrates

         I've been thinking a lot about wisdom and applying said wisdom in my life.  Am I wise?  Depends on the subject really, and the day.  What constitutes wisdom, and what is just opinion?

        I think the obvious answer to wisdom is life experience.  The older you are the more you've experienced, thus the more you have to draw on.  Now that is a very simple answer, but living a long time doesn't necessarily equate to wisdom.  Look no further than the television or news articles and you'll see prime examples of people who despite there many years on this globe, lack wisdom (and these people are running countries).  Although life experience helps, it may produce more opinions than true wisdom.

        Thinking about it more, I thought that maybe hardships, struggles, or lessons provided wisdom.  Again, in certain circumstances I would say this is true, but I think there is still a piece missing.  It helps to have gone through obstacles, to be met again and again with failure and learn from it.  Many of our masters have, and we seek out their council.  Though I think there is another very important aspect that people who are truly wise have done, and that is doing the work on themselves.  With that is intention and mindfulness.  What?!  Crazy!  It's like those lessons come up over and over again in our lessons.  Learning from our struggles is important, but sometimes we luck out with this, and other times we forget the lesson once we've moved passed it.  The kind of wisdom I think I've gained, and I'm not saying I'm wise or that I know a lot, but it comes from looking at myself.  I mean really looking.  Looking at the patterns that seem to repeat, the failures, the depression/anxiety, as well as the joy, the fun.  Not saying that anything I've learned will necessarily help someone else, because we are different people who live different lives.  Also, I'm still working on myself.  What I do have is perspective though.  The kind of perspective that comes from hitting rock bottom, and then falling further, deeper and deeper.  Sitting there for a while, taking in as much information as I can and then piecing life back together.  Learning from my mistakes and also keeping those lessons in front of me so that I don't fall back into those patterns.  Also accepting that sometimes I will regardless of my best intentions, because that's life, that's living.

        Wisdom I think is in knowing thyself.  Knowing your strengths and weaknesses, the good and the bad.  Knowing your limitations and what place you have in the world.  In the end we are all living from our egocentric points of views.  There is nothing wrong with that.  That is how our consciousness is.  It interacts with the world by how it responds to you.  Although I think it is important to realize that there are other consciousness' that we share this space with, and that we need to learn to empathize to some degree.  We may not control our world, but we do control how we choose to react to it.  I'll stop there before I free fall into this rabbit hole.