Wisdom is Earned, Not Given

I came across the quote "Wisdom is earned, not given", and it really resonated with me.

In our current day and age, information is freely and widely available. You can immediately find content produced by some of the smartest people in their fields, whether it's books, articles, videos, or podcasts.

I am part of a generation that grew up with the internet; during my teenage years, I learned that I could Google all my problems and find solutions to anything pretty quickly.

As time went on, I began using Google very often, I would say more than a dozen times a day. Knowing that I could figure out any fact about anything gave me a false sense of knowing everything. I was obivously wrong.

I also gave a lot of importance to knowing as many facts as possible, I tought being wise or knowlegable was about memorising information.

However, now I understand that knowing how to take in that information and applying it to life in a practical way is a completely different thing. And you cannot learn that by just absorbing information.

For example, you can watch countless videos about travel on the internet, but unless you actually go and travel the world, you'll never truly understand how it feels or acquire the wisdom that comes with doing it.

Wisdom is acquired through personal experience, involving failures and all the small lessons learned along the way. This wisdom helps you build a model of the world that will serve you for new challenges ahead. Giving all of this acquired wisdom to someone else is difficult; all you can do is describe it.

While information can help show you the way, wisdom must be earned through experience.