Start with Time
Wisdom, it seems, might have an element of time.
The central issue with intuition is that the reason for an action and the feeling one should follow an action are separated in time, with the reason appearing later, after the action, sometimes much later, years later.
When I think about the People Problem, one of the aspects of the problem is "why do some relationships withstand time better than others?" The best relationships seem to have an element of durability. Time seems to be a pathway to understanding the depth of relationships.
Part of why I am thinking about the wisdom problem at all is that I am aware that time is passing, and rather than waiting for wisdom to appear as a function of ageing, I'm wondering if I can acquire a degree of wisdom earlier. If wisdom were fixed as a function of ageing, and could not be acquired earlier, than this is a fruitless quest. Instead, it does seem that if I ponder wisdom, work it through in a way that makes sense to me and seems to correlate with the external world, then I could possibly acquire wisdom earlier. And then I would have more time with more wisdom, which sounds like a good thing. One pictures wise men as old and grey. Probably as a person in their 70s. I am 42. I started thinking about wisdom four years ago. If I pondered wisdom for 12 years, writing and reading and discussing it, then one would likely say, "12 years! That's a long time to have been thinking about this problem constructively!". But I would then only be 50. And if I then lived even only to my 70s, then I would have twenty years more of pursuing wisdom after an initial 12 years. And that seems like a good thing to do: acquire wisdom early and live wisely for longer.
Central to this kind of thinking is that time is passing. Understanding the degree to which time passes seems to give perspective to questions, and to decisions, and that seems to be a good place to start. In considering whether a decision is wise, change the time perspective and look at it projected into the future. Think of the porch test: assess the decision as if you are looking back on it from your rocking chair on your porch as an old person. But it feels almost as useful to assess the decision in the context of the story to this point, in the context of the events and lessons that have already passed. Projections into the future are bound to miss their mark on occasions. Explaining the why of the past seems to be more reliable, and to give insight into tactics and strategies that will work to influence decisions in the future. Knowing yourself is the start, but "yourself" is how you have been in the past, and having a good model based on past information should predict future behaviours. Because we are locked in forward time, with past and future, with the past knowable to a reliable degree, and the future mildly predictable, then considering what is wise seems to start from this context. I could rate my past decisions on a scale of Dumb to Wise, and weigh up my decisions today on the same scale, and then assess them based on their outcomes. That's a time dependent process.
But while useful, this is not exactly what I am getting at when I think about time being the start of wisdom.
When I think about time, I cannot avoid considering the scale of time. Time is long. And, to of course, make this all self-referential, my portion of time is small. Small enough that the comparison is ridiculous. But yet, there have been moments, in which I am deeply happy, and the sensation of time lifts. There is almost no time in some moments. Those moments are bookended by time aware moments and so I know exactly, ironically, how long the timeless moment was, but the key issue is that the sensation of time disappears. Contemplation of time gives us an expansive view. But yet deepest moments of happiness and flow sometimes have time suspension or time expansion.
I had a recent experience in which the awareness of the passage of time was the key to a sensation of deep happiness. Away on holidays, I, my wife, and kids went out to dinner. It happened to be across from a motel that my wife and I had stayed in twenty years ago before we were married. It was our first visit together to the beach side town, and because we were poor students, we stayed in cheap, dodgy accommodation. Being back in the same place, married with lots of kids, staying in nice accomodations and eating all together in a fancy restaurant gave me such an awareness of the time that had passed since that first trip decades ago. And that sense of time, and the changes in our lives across that time span gave me a sense of deep satisfaction and happiness and gave me a perspective on my wife and my relationship that was healing and restoring. Those elements; deep satisfaction, happiness, perspective, healing, restoring; seem like elements of wisdom. They resonate with me. They feel authentic. And the key element in their experience was the awareness of the passage of time to that point. The awareness that so much time had passed. And that across that time, something has lasted, something has been built, things have been shared, but yet over so much time. It makes me feel happiness and affection and appreciation, all things that are good.
And then it gave me a lesson, a realisation that helps me approach making decisions now. Knowing that time will pass and that if I build shared experiences, of building a shared good life, that I will experience, and likely those around me will also experience, a deeply satisfying happiness. And that feels like an element of wisdom.
In the building and the doing and the sharing and the living, the slow passage of lengths of time is the refining that adds richness and depth to our lives. We let wine and whiskey and books age with time. And because they do, the better wines, the better whiskey and the better books all become better, whereas the poor wines, whiskeys and books don't stand the test of time.
And then, consider the other extreme, the micro. One tactic to get myself to do good behaviours is to track the time it takes me to do them. The act of recording the time, writing it into a spreadsheet or app and looking back on it seems to reduce procrastinating, and to reinforce the good actions. I want to see myself spending time on exercise, with the kids, sleeping, journaling, reviewing. And measuring that time, counting the seconds and minutes seems to encourage those behaviours. Realising I spent hours on something useless, or that I am over investing time, changes the time I spend, changes my actions and behaviours, resulting in better decisions. And better decisions are wise decisions.
Counting the seconds and minutes, and the years and decades both seem to be pathways to wise decisions. Start with time.
