How does a man become wise?
What do you think? Live a long time? Don’t we look toward old people for wisdom? I’m not sure that’s true anymore. The owl has been a symbol of wisdom over the years. We refer to the “wise” old owl. The owl is often used as a symbol for wisdom. We also tend to look toward education/knowledge for wisdom. As an aside, we all go to college don’t we to get a BS and you all know what BS means. Well I got an MS once and MS of course means “more of the same”. Then I worked long and hard toward getting a PhD and that simply means…….. “more of the same”. Actually, I didn’t finish the PhD. I got all the course work done, passed written and oral exams but never finished the dissertation. I got “saved” in the mean time and it just didn’t seems as important. Besides, I was in the consulting business doing economic research at the time and eventually completed over 300 projects with written and oral reports but those projects weren’t for an academic advisor who could publish the results under his name. Those of you who have been through the process know what I’m talking about. But I digress…………..
One of the firms I worked for back in the day was a firm called “Experience Incorporated”. It was a bunch of old people, mostly retired, who had gotten together to sell their experience. What’s the old expression, “a picture is worth a thousand words”? How about a life spent building, managing, operating, meat packing plants is worth $1000 an hour? I had a file of over 500 retired “experts” in a wide variety of organizations and businesses and 9 of them had spent their lives in the meat packing industry. So, when the request came for a proposal to determine the feasibility of a meat packing plant in Botswana, Africa, I was ready with 9 eager, experienced (and wise?) experts to choose from.
Well, is it age? education? experience? or all three? I just found the answer from my stack of memory cards.