THIS IS NOT WISDOM…

I’m in a good mood so I’d like to mess with you a little bit. We are going to play a little game, here’s how it goes, in the article is a lot of useful information and a lot of bullshit. However, I’m going to package everything to sound wise and it is upon you to decipher for yourself which is which. It’s also a lesson to those who assume every random internet article and/or video as a “truth,” it’s not. Let’s go..

We’ve been taught and therefore internalized that life is a series of steps. You start out at school, then college, then a job, a partner, kids, retire then wait around for your death. Because of this we’ve developed a tendency to always look forward to something, we’ve grown to be dissatisfied with what we already have and therefore always keep chasing for the next thing. We live our lives hoping, waiting, yearning, wishing.. Is this really how to live? What if we looked at life differently, not as a series of steps but as a dance. You see the point of a dance is to enjoy the dance. You don’t dance to get anywhere, like you go to college for a job, or a job so you can feed a family etc etc.. you just dance to dance. After all, eventually we’ll leave this world empty handed, the point of life is not to achieve anything, the point is to move with the beats, to odi, or kuku dance yourself to your grave. Was that wise advice?

Next, let’s examine how we live and go about our day to day lives, can we claim to be living on our own terms? How much of it is living as we want and how much of it is living as we are expected? Money buys you freedom they say, with it you can do a lot things, this is true, but is that freedom? Freedom, I think, should be measured not by how many things you can choose to do but by how many things you can choose to walk away from at any moment. In other words, true freedom is like knowing that God exists and knowing exactly what the punishment for your actions would be and then going ahead and doing them anyway. In other words, I know what I’m expected to do and yet that is what I will not. Ask yourself, can you walk away from your job? From your spouse? From your God? How many things in your life can you decide right now to walk away from? That’s how you measure how free you are. Next paragraph.

Let’s talk God a bit. A story is told of a man who asked a priest whether God exists or not and the priest in turn asked the man, “If I told you that God exists, will you change your life?” I need you to stop reading, imagine you are the man and answer the question, if you were 100% certain, will it change how you live? Let’s assume you said no, in that case it doesn’t matter whether he exists or not, you should go ahead and live as you were going to anyway. But if the answer is yes then you don’t need to ask the question of God’s existence, you as a person need a God and should therefore seek one. Wisdom or Bullshit?

Let’s talk relationships. Aristotle is quoted as saying, “my friends, there are no friends.” At first glance this may sound contradictory, since you are calling someone a friend and at the same time telling the friend that there are no friends. But when we examine it deeply we notice a different interpretation; you see, the point of having a friend is so that you do not have to be friendly all the time. Let’s be honest, it can be exhausting to be friendly all the time; fake smiles, agreeing with everything they say, liking everything they do etc etc.. Sometimes you should be able to be rude and unpleasant to your friend without the said friend viewing it as a threat to your friendship. In fact, this is the perfect test to know whether you’re likely to have a stable relationship or it’s a fleeting one. If it requires you to be friendly all the time, bruv, it won’t work long term. Where does this advice belong?

Wisdom is in rejecting perfection, in realizing that your opinions do not necessarily align with the general betterment of society. Wisdom is in always remaining doubtful, that is, in not knowing. Knowing is the enemy of knowledge; when you know (or you think you do) it means you are certain. When you start being certain, you stop being curious and curiosity is the path to wisdom. True wisdom is in doubting me and this whole article, actually the entire blog, hence the title of the article; THIS IS NOT WISDOM. Time for results, so, how many do you think is just plain BS?