What Is Wise?

[Martin Hash]

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I spent decades becoming “The Wysest Myn in the Wyrld.” Early on in my careers, I made a checklist of what constituted wisdom then proceeded to do everything on it, completing on my 59th birthday: depth & breath of knowledge in medicine, law, engineering, business, art, sports, travel, philosophy, and family. The last, and most important aspect of wisdom, is self-awareness. I’m self-aware enough to know that nobody else can say what wisdom even is, and certainly don’t recognize mine. To most people, the wisest person would be famous, agrees with them, wouldn’t be someone they personally knew, and that uneducated, inexperienced people can still be among the wisest.

In my wisdom, I’ve given up on people considering me wise despite achieving all the aspects, including 1400+ wisdom-based podcasts, where my tagline is “Wysest Myn in the world because the competition just ain’t that tough.” I even have a Facebook page named “Mr. Wysdom.” Never mind the 40+ books, novels & screenplays, no amount of evidence will suffice, except if I get famous, will change their minds. Otherwise, they’re dismissive of my degrees & licenses, ignorant of my accomplishments, overlook of my writings, and only mildly amused by my extensive travel. For example, I posed this conundrum online; an answer I received was: “You certainly have great knowledge, and general experience and shown you can apply them. But If I want specific advice on a health issue, a specific legal case or an engineering problem, I'm probably going to look for the guy with decades of experience in that specific field.” That’s not wisdom, that’s expertise. Here’s the difference: ask the doctor a question about engineering, or the engineer about accounting, or the lawyer about medicine. And if you do find one of those unicorns, like me, who has 2 specialties, ask them about one of my other fields, or about travel, or about dozens of hobbies, or music, or any of the other multitude of things I know a lot about. Yes, every field has someone more knowledgeable than me, but nobody has as much expert knowledge & experience in so many fields, the entire spectrum; in fact, I even repair cars, program computers and build electronics. If you’re stranded on a desert island, do you want someone slightly more expert in one subject, or me? More insulting, even though there is disregard from men, there’s a certain level of recognition, but women are completely oblivious. To them, I’m just a man who succeeded at everything due to my privilege; they think they could have done the same thing if they had the money, time, inclination and lucky. It doesn’t make any difference that I’m the only one in the world who has ever done it!

p.s. “Only a wise person knows what wisdom is.” - me