Knowledge Speaks Wisdom Listens

Music has always played a huge part in my life and when people ask what kind of music I like, I still find it extremely difficult to pin down a style or an era. I was born in 1954 and raised by the music of my parents such as Glenn Miller, Elvis, Tom Jones, Peggy Lee, Little Richard, Ella Fitzgerald to name a few. I can still see my mother tidying up the house chanting away to Al Martino blasting  from the old gramophone. 

That influence grew on me right into the 60’s, for me, the period that really took popular music to another level with the onset of The Beatles etc and the great ‘happening’ that was flower power. 

I still remember, even though I was only 10 or 12 years old, spending most of my early to teen years being raised by a family of 16 ( yes, my mothers family consisted of 16 but that’s another story) when my uncle Richard put a 45 record into his record player of Jimi Hendrix’s All Along the Watchtower. Now, even at that early age I was transfixed by the power of the track. 

Now for the purpose of this blog, that great rock  guitarist, Jimi Hendrix, came up with a philosophical statement, during that period, that had a distinct impact on my way of thinking in later years.  

The quote says knowledge speaks and wisdom listens.  Now, who would expect such an incredible bit of insight from a person in the rock world? 

Knowledge is power they say. But it is only knowledge and when passing on this knowledge to others what else can you gain from it?  Have you learned from it and are you capable of developing it ?

But then the quote says that wisdom listens. Wisdom, for me, is  knowledge beyond the common knowledge. 

Therefore, listening, for me, became an important skill that i needed to add to my armoury. 

My father used to say “Edward, its your mouth that gets you into trouble not your ears.” Wise words that took me a number of years for it to eventually sink in. You know, when do we ever listen to our parents at a young age and then look back and realise, damn, they were so right and now that i have all grown up (if we ever do), I will be making it a point to pass this wisdom, not knowledge, on to my children and beyond.

Learning to be quiet and listening, can be difficult especially if your ego gets the better of you. 

Have you ever sat in a meeting and a person presenting a long, powerpoint full of statistics and quotes begins to develop into the sound of a pump jack, grinding steadily up and down, up and down, thump and squeek……oh well you get the idea, while your wee mind is trying hard to resist the temptation to tell everyone how super bored you are with this constant grind of knowledge transmitting in thirties, BBC radio monotone while your eyesight is beginning to loose focus as the stats come flying off the screen.  I think I managed to pick up at least five minutes of the knowledge produced by the person before I lost total concentration.What did I really learn?  How to contain five minutes of knowledge? 

There are very few people who have the skill to make a powerpoint session work before the knowledge becomes mind pollution. 

Anyway. Enough about powerpoints.

Now here is something else an old boss of mine used to say “Don’t tell me how to build a clock Eddy, just tell me the time!” By explaining everything in excruciating detail can prove to be boring.  We know there is a technical process but just get to the point and encourage us to consider, what's next. 

I discovered over the years that I rarely learn very much by talking all the time. The one that listens is far more likely to analyse and develop. Nothing worse than feeling silly if you were talking all the time instead of listening!

Those early years led me to discover that by just adding enough to a conversation saved me from being a powerpoint robot. So, I try to be around people who know things but if you hang around people who only know as much as yourself, how can you learn more?

So, use your time wisely and develop the skill of being wise. Its not easy to be quiet.  The art of projecting your wisdom to others without sounding pompous or smart is a difficult skill to conquer as we human beings are natural communicators and constantly fight with our egos. 

I remember I produced a radio show called ‘Solutions’. The aim of the show was to have a panel of likeminded people discuss a topic but the twist was that they had to come up with a solution or solutions at the end of the show. Now hosting a show like this isn’t easy as you are constantly wrangling with a variety of knowledge and opinions from the group.  But when you challenge them to solve that problem, most find it very difficult to find a solution. 

Most could talk the talk but not walk the talk. 

Patience is another attribute to wisdom. Learning how to be patient while others continue to hug a conversation can prove a very powerful tool to have. A wise person will have the patience to interject when the time is necessary and you may find that this can throw a conversation into another realm. 

Thus creating the challenge. 

Usually, this is when  you can find out who in the group has that ability to take the subject matter further or not. Therefore, people with the knowledge will share to those who are interested, while wisdom will take the knowledge and take it beyond, common knowledge. 

So, the battle between knowledge and wisdom has been with us since the beginning of human kind. We are constantly seeking knowledge and in this so called information age where knowledge can be found by ‘googling’, we think we are becoming smarter than previous generations as we have that knowledge literally at our fingertips. But, the wise person knows that this is just knowledge and for human kind to advance we need a wise head to take that knowledge further.