“Our lives flow down the stream of time. Some streams go straight and some curve and wonder through the forest, but all are connected into one that flows into the distant mist and the waterfall that is ahead” Tom Pearson - Oct 8th, 2009
Measuring ones life
It is interesting how one measures their own life. Happiness and life satisfaction measures where people are today however it doesn’t measure their total life. What sums our life when we are done living? History can help us by looking at past lives and what those lives have brought into our world, their community, their family, their friends and to themselves.
Who in the past has lived and provided a large measure of success? We need to first agree on what is the metric. Religion teaches us what one does on earth will echo through eternity in the next world. Our society treasures wealth, family, happiness and houses. But what value does our society gives to knowledge, wisdom and love and what it brings into the this world? If it is kept to oneself, very little can be achieved except for the person who has it. But if it can be applied and taught to others it can be enormous and forever paying forward. Before the internet, books were the primary conveyance of knowledge to the masses. In less than 50 years we have gone from a horse drawn buggy to a man walking on the moon. And in less then 40 years after walking on the moon the internet has taken all the information in our world libraries and made them now available on our smart phone.
Knowledge
Can knowledge achieve happiness, wealth or a family that adores you? Knowledge rightfully applied can lead to all this and even more. Wisdom can be boiled down to knowledge rightfully and skillfully applied in action. A person cannot be wise if he cannot apply his knowledge. So, what does one do with the wisdom that he has gain over his life? During his career he can apply it to his profession or business. We know this because workers who are older and have jobs that apply wisdom and knowledge together generally make more money and thus more value than younger workers. But what happens after you stop wanting to make more money? How does one leave a legacy that is beyond the realm of monetary value? Sure, one could make more money to leave to their heirs but how does that promote or instill wisdom in them?
The book of Proverbs over hundreds of generations has done this for its readers. Then why do people think that the fruit of their work is the legacy that they will leave to the next generation. It can be if it is knowledge and wisdom is based on applied research that is multiplied by new generations with additional knowledge, that improve the lives of others.
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