Age Wise
We Could All Use More Wisdom Right Now
Wisdom promotes personal and social well-being. Here’s how to gain some.
Asked by researchers to reflect on the disagreements they have with others, an astonishing 82% of people said they were usually right and the other person was usually wrong. That’s impossible math, of course, and it is just one example of our collective lack of wisdom, and how hard it can be to gain some.
If wisdom came with age or smarts, we would all be a lot more tolerant, considerate, and respectful of others, according to a vast body of research on the topic. We’d listen more, spout less, and be more thoughtful about contradictory information and opposing opinions. Our world would be less polarized and acrimonious.
We’d feel better, too.
“Emerging research suggests that wisdom is linked to better overall health, well-being, happiness, life satisfaction, and resilience,” scientists concluded in a review of research published in the Harvard Review of Psychiatry. While there’s no proof that being wiser will make you healthier, the insights that come with wisdom are said to bring greater individual well-being through increased acceptance, gratitude, and calmness, all of which means less anxiety and depression.
But alas, neither age nor intelligence automatically beget wisdom. Instead of growing wiser, most of us just become more intellectually inflexible with time, our beliefs more resolute, our minds increasingly closed off to opposing facts and views.
Meanwhile, if our increasing inability to agree on anything these days serves as a gauge, wisdom is on the wane.
What is wisdom?
One reason we’re all not wiser is our utter lack of understanding about what wisdom actually is and how to use it, well, wisely.
For thousands of years, wise people across multiple cultures — from Buddha to Plato to Gandhi — have tried to define wisdom. Yet a universal definition remains elusive, even among modern big thinkers who study its many aspects, sources, and benefits. Dictionaries fall well short, with simplistic but popular definitions like “good sense or judgment” or “the natural ability to understand…
