On choosing thoughts and words wisely

Here's a wonderful, timely, and relevant repeat from this date three years ago. I hope you find it informative and useful.


"It is a choice each of us makes over and over again, many times throughout the day, whether to use knowledge as power or to cultivate intimacy."

-- Susan Griffin, in A Chorus of Stones

Yesterday was a day of many reminders that you can be absolutely right about another person's situation and even about the actions they should take to improve it, and yet if you're wrong in your attitude, your intention, your timing, or your tone, the benefit of this truth will be totally lost in the ineffective communication (given that "effective" communication occurs only when the message "intended" by the originator is, in fact, the message "received" by the recipient). If you use your knowledge with the intention to gain power for yourself, you will be granted none (not in real terms, anyway), and your knowledge will be rendered useless, destroying all intimacy in the process. However, if true connection and enhanced intimacy are your primary motivations, your use of knowledge for another's benefit (vs. your own) actually gains power in its overall effectiveness and influence.

It is a common human desire to be heard, understood, and valued by others. This is good. There is an even deeper, even more fundamental need to feel connected and included as an equal among one's fellow human beings. This is great. As Jim Collins says so cleverly in his bestseller, Good to Great, "the enemy of the great is the good." Pursuing the good (one's own sense of personal power), at the expense of another, which can often sound very needy and prescriptive, with sentences starting like (or feeling like to them), "You need to ..." or "You should ..." often destroys the impact of whatever potentially useful information might follow. Speaking from a desperate "needing to be understood" is a cleverly disguised power grab, an attempt to feel more powerful than another, and it pushes away the more essential need for equality, inclusion, and intimacy. Words like, "Can you please help me better understand you?" or "Is there anything you are requesting from me in this, or would you just appreciate my listening and support?" are connective in nature, desiring intimacy through inquiry. They often open the door for input through trust and deep connection, in a way that is sure to be heard and valued, thereby increasing the power and influence of whatever relevant information that might follow.

Stephen Covey said it really well in his Habit 5 of The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People, where he described "empathic listening" as "seeking first to understand, and only then to be understood." The truly wise do not need to be seen and understood and valued as such. They merely seek what they know all of us really need - deep connection with others - through the immense power of their very thoughtful listening, and then follow it with heartfelt speaking, at the right time and with the right tone, and they are subsequently granted huge influence as a very natural result. I forget who said it exactly, but a famous Zen saying goes like this: "what you chase eludes you; when you accept, it comes."

And, in case you're wondering, yes, I have come across several of these amazing characters in my life: Chip Bell, Geoff Bellman, Peter Block, Betty Butkus, Jack Kaslow, Sheila Kelly, Katie Laine, Bill & Claudia Parkhurst, Ann Perle, Bruce Mortimer Shotkin (and this just happened again yesterday, as it does so many days), to name just a few, and their impact on my life has been immense, and their need for me to get them, ... absolutely zilch. In several key moments in my life, they have literally "listened me alive," using their knowledge as pure intimacy-building, and I will never forget them for it.

"The wise have a solid sense of appropriate silence and the ability to keep a storehouse of carefully guarded secrets. Their capacity and character and sense of restraint are greatly appreciated and respected."

-- Baltasar Gracian

"Wisdom is the quality that keeps you from getting into situations where you really need it and don't have it."

-- Doug Larson

"With much wisdom comes much grief; and he that increases his knowledge increases his sorrow."

-- Bible

"It is not wise to act wiser than is appropriate or necessary in the moment at hand."

-- Phillippe Quinault

"A wise man sees just as much as he ought, not as much as he can."

-- Michel de Montaigne

"Be wise, and give up the need for anyone else to know it."

-- Anonymous

"The only true wisdom is in knowing you know nothing."

-- Socrates

"Wisdom is a sacred, mysterious communion."

-- Victor Hugo

"Before wisdom comes harsh denial of truth."

-- Anonymous

"A man's ruin lies in his mind and tongue."

-- Egyptian saying

Blocks to and complexities of the path to wisdom

Interesting trip, this "long, strange one" that eventually leads a person to the path of truth and wisdom. Along the way, there are many bridges out, detours, side trips, and workarounds, and a scant few who can lend a real helping hand, although many will try. Those who claim to know the way more often than not will lead you astray, for it's a perilous, mostly solitary journey, and I am actually beginning to believe that none but the bravest of adventurers ever wander anywhere near the path, and those often do so accidentally. You see you can't cautiously creep up on this thing or find it with calm, scholarly intent. And for whatever strange reason, you rarely get there by "following the rules," even though the rules turn out to be very valid and wise in the end. But alas, you kind of have to bumble and grumble and stumble onto this path on bloody hands and knees, totally frustrated and exhausted, dusty and sweaty, having taken several unguided trips to nowhere along the way, until you're finally ready to give up. It's so often then that He shows up with His oh so timely guidance, and only then that we're really ready to listen to and follow it. So, if you're really "trying" your best to be truthful and wise, have fun with that. And if you're not thinking about it in the least, have fun with that. The chance of the former approach getting you where you want to go is suprisingly, dismally low, and the chance of the latter landing you where the former desires to go is amazingly, freakingly high, although the journey can be quite unpredictable.

"There are in fact four very significant stumbling blocks in the way of grasping the truth and living wisely, which hinder every man, however learned, and scarcely allow anyone to win a clear path and title to wisdom, namely, 1) the weak example of unworthy authority, 2) longstanding custom and tradition, 3) the feelings and mood of the largely ignorant crowd, and 4) the hiding of our own ignorance while making a display of our apparent knowledge."

-- Roger Bacon

"It is proof of a base and low mind for one to wish to think with the masses or pursue the majority, merely because the majority is the majority. Truth does not change because it is, or is not, believed by a majority of the people."

-- Giordano Bruno

"How much easier and more seductive it is to be harshly critical and judgmental; it can often seem quite impossible to be correct while also accepting, gentle, and kind."

-- Benjamin Disraeli

"Truth and wisdom are not easily communicable. The truth which a wise man tries to communicate usually sounds foolish to the inexperienced and unwise."

-- Herman Hesse

"The illiterate of the 21st century will not be those who cannot read and write, but those who cannot learn, unlearn, and relearn every day."

-- Alvin Toffler

"To acquire knowledge, one must study; but to acquire wisdom, one must be willing to observe, to risk failure, and to fully experience."

-- Marilyn vos Savant

"One's first step in wisdom is to boldly question everything -- and one's last is to peacefully come to terms with everything."

-- George Christoph Lichtenberg

"Wisdom is not a pursued taste, but an acquired one, usually coming out the other side of a rabid pursuit of its opposite."

-- Yours Truly

"A sure sign of a genius is that all of the less bright are either confused by or in a confederacy against him."

-- Frank Lloyd Wright

"The wisest man knows he has so much yet to learn, fully aware of his ignorant condition."

-- George Santayana

"Experience: that most brutal of teachers. But you learn, my God you learn."

-- C.S. Lewis