Words of wisdom inspire us to recognize meaningful underlying themes evoked from a few creatively combined words or sentences. But they are not like scientific generalizations. They do not necessarily have the same personal meaning for everyone. Instead, they are more like literary images. Their general meanings may elicit varying interpretations by different individuals. To get the most out of them, the meanings of words of wisdom need to be personalized. They need to “take root in our personal experience.”
And this can only happen through the activation of insight, based on our own personal experiences, by the use of self-reflection and introspection.
Words of wisdom can help us become better and wiser individuals when we make an effort to personalize their meanings and then use these personalized meanings to create worthwhile guidelines for our own choices and actions.
Getting Personal
Illustration:
“This above all: to thine own self be true” by William Shakespeare
- This famous quote, read by millions, may mean slightly different things to different people. Try to formulate a general meaning in your own words – e.g., be honest with yourself, accept self-responsibility, or do not allow yourself to live in ways that contradict your core values, etc.
- Apply insights from this quote to your own life through examples of being true to yourself; e.g., give a personal example from your own life – e.g., the time I turned down a job offer because it was not what I wanted to do, even though it had a high salary, or the time I moved away from my parents because I felt it was time to be on my own.
- Do you agree that this quote reflects wise advice? Why or why not?
If you do not make the effort to personalize, interpret, and reflect on words of wisdom, you run the risk of glossing over their potential to yield valuable personal insights. They will become more like quick-reading greeting card messages rather than genuine inspirations for gaining personal insight and practical wisdom.
Words of wisdom that are not personalized, will lose their potential impact to actually guide you to become wiser in your actions. For example, it is one thing to know that “Honesty is the best policy,’ but something more to actually have personalized the meaning of this principle to your own life, and to actually use it as a guide in your everyday life.
“The pleasure of the soul appears to be found in the journey of discovery, the unfolding revelation of expanded insight and experience.” (Anthony Lawlor, Irish architect and author)
“Insight doesn’t happen often on the click of the moment, like a lucky snapshot, but comes in its own time and more slowly and from nowhere but within.” (Eudora Weltly, American short story writer, novelist)
….Top of post image, (Thinker), from dreamstime.com
