Facing the Truth and Becoming Wise
One thing I’ve noticed in the small amount of growing up I’ve done, is that I have come to appreciate various truths in a way that I did not before.
I began thinking about this after writing the previous post, on mind wandering and thinking about cheese.
As a quick reminder, in that piece I explored the nature of mind-wandering. I asked questions about why I, and people like me in general, find ourselves very often trying to avoid silence. We thrust ourselves into phone calls or TikToks, walking around like ‘phone zombies.’
As you know, I concluded the piece by discussing another possible effect of our avoidance of silence and boredom. Namely, it prevents us from being self-conscious; from thinking about what we are doing. We trap ourselves in immersive activities and, in so doing, ward off any possibility of reflection. After all, How could I reflect? I am texting.
It is notable that I had not planned to reach that conclusion. Rather, in writing what I did, I simply wanted to raise the question: what the hell are we doing when we work so hard to avoid boredom?
But, I did come to a conclusion. And this is the crazy thing: I didn’t just come to a conclusion at the end of that paper. I came to it in my life. Friday afternoon, after the post had been published, I walked home from work in silence. I walked to the store later, also in silence.
Now, don’t get me wrong. I don’t mean to say silence is amazing and should be embraced at all times. What I do think is interesting is that the conclusion mattered for me. It mattered in a way conclusions don’t normally. After all, I am normally spoon-fed conclusions. I am a student: I read arguments, decide whether I agree with them or not, and move on with my life. But here, I didn’t move on. This conclusion guided my behavior, it impacted my life, it was something I thought worthy of bringing up in other conversations.
When understood in these terms, the phenomenon I experienced actually looks to be quite common. Students are constantly told not to procrastinate, but, in most cases, mere advice is not very impactful. Often, it is only after some personal experience with it — maybe they flunk a class, or fail a test they thought would be no problem — that they begin to take procrastination seriously.
What’s going on here?
One notable fact about the two examples, of procrastination and mind-wandering, is that they each have different sources of this deeper knowledge, what we might call wisdom.
In the example of mind-wandering, I came to know in this deeper way by writing; By reflecting on my experience somehow. It wasn’t just that I lacked the specific piece of knowledge — that mind wandering is a way of avoiding self-consciousness. After all, if you told me that before I started writing, I would have likely shrugged it off.
Rather, that piece of knowledge, prior to writing, lacked a certain connection to my life. By writing about it in a reflective fashion, I used it to make sense of my own experience. I used it to say what I was doing — to, in a roundabout way, become self conscious. Woah.
In the example of procrastination, however, things are quite different. Namely, it is not as if I do some activity, draw some conclusion, or thread my newfound knowledge about procrastination into my life. There is no conclusion to draw or threading to do. My problem here is simply that I have not come face to face with a fact I fully know. While I might be able to recite the advice of a teacher, it will only be after I discover the truth of that advice for myself that it will count for me in the way we are interested in. Once I flunk a test because I put off studying, I will suddenly become quite aware of the dangers of procrastination.
While the specific ways I come to either instance of wisdom are different, now that everything is on the table, a common theme becomes clear. In both cases, I only gain the wisdom by coming into contact with what might’ve been before an impersonal fact. In one case, I do this by reflection and by writing. In the other, my being struck by the truth of the fact does this: I must accept it, or face destruction or failure. Either way, something abstract — a claim about the nature of self-reflection, or, for example, about whether procrastination is a good idea — becomes practical and relevant to my life. It is taken from broad terms and applied to mine specifically. Avoiding self-consciousness is what I do when I rummage through my phone on the walk home from work. Procrastination is bad for me and I better not do it, or else I’ll end up like I did that horrible day in 7th grade.
This is deeply controversial, and, speaking as someone who has just begun writing, hopefully wrong or misguided in some way. Namely, it draws into question what I am doing here. If wisdom requires one draw a conclusion herself, with respect to her own life, or that one be faced with an experience in his own life that he can’t but accept, then it seems one cannot become wise through reading. If that’s the case, then you, reader, would be better served by doing something else.
But maybe I’m being too quick here. In the words of Marcel, in Time Regained:
“In reality, every reader, as he reads, is the reader of himself. The work of the writer is only a sort of optic instrument which he offers to the reader so that he may discern in the book what he would probably not have seen in himself”
It is the difference between wisdom and mere knowledge that one must come to the wisdom him or herself, it must be a product of reflection on their own experience; it is a special fact about humans that things we come to know in this special way end up counting for us on a much deeper level.
this is so beautiful