Norm
Senior FZ6 Advisor
Insight and Wisdom
After a long night of call I sat before the three attendings and presented my cases from the night before. Internship, boot camp if you will, became a founding father of the concept of insult to injury and kicking you when you’re down. When I finished the first presentation one of the attendings sighed and asked “Does he have insight?” I looked over to my resident for help. I’d never been asked this. It would be a question to be answered throughout my career in dealing with patients with complex disease.
The resident answered “No” for me but seeing my blank expression, the attending threw me a bone and expounded on the topic of insight. It was meant to examine a patient’s understanding of their disease. Did they understand the seriousness of the diagnosis? Did they realize the complexity of the illness; the numerous treatments, surgeries, or procedures that would follow? But what it really meant, and I only truly understood this years later, was did they realize we cannot cure this and that they will suffer or die from our lack of understanding?
Insight implied looking inside oneself for the answers. Insight meant that you have been given all of the available information from outside sources and now, in this final stage, you would think about this information. You would include vital pieces and exclude useless ones. And then you would make a presentation. Not to a superior, but to yourself. And from this you would draw the conclusion that was not given to you by someone else.
Insight is serious. It demands silence, countenance, and all the faculties of the mind at once. Only then can you come to the conclusions you were meant to find. And frequently these conclusions were serious as well. They are sad or somber as they have many times revealed reduced choices for the future and asked acceptance, from you, of the remaining choices. It asked that you not struggle to find the choices which are no longer available to you.
Whereas insight is solitary and somber, wisdom is congenial and social. Wisdom is light-hearted and does not occupy the entire mind. Wisdom can be offered, even when the mind is busy with many tasks. Wisdom was meant to be sought and to be shared. Wisdom can only be acquired through years of experience. Years of experience do not guarantee wisdom however. Rather, it is offered, and a lucky few, an insightful few, took hold of the offer. Wisdom provided us with reproducible consequences from our choices so that mistakes were not made twice. Wisdom is a catalogue of experience and the ability to call up the applicable experience for each choice moving forward, such that it might guide you safely forward.
Wisdom that is not shared is crude next to that which is provided freely. It has not been honed by the process of shared experiences, which greatly outnumber the experience of an individual. Shared experience allows us to shape our wisdom into a final product. This product can now be offered to those with few or no experience. The lucky few, the insightful few, will recognize wisdom and accept it enthusiastically as it offers them a short cut to their goals.
Unlike insight, wisdom is happy because wisdom reveals choices that were unseen and would not be seen but for the giver of wisdom. Wisdom keeps you safe. And wisdom is the constant companion of insight. They need each other, as they are the checks and balances of the mind’s decision making process. They are, indeed, the “Chutes and Ladders” of decision making. Insight and wisdom let us climb the ladders, avoiding the harshness of countless errors and the long way around. When we lack insight and reject wisdom we take the long way and in the worst case we lose ground through the chutes.
My friends and family kid me about my time on these forums. Where they see unsubstantiated opinions from faceless individuals I see insight and wisdom. Through the aggregate experience of countless individuals I have honed my skills, avoided chutes, and climbed ladders. I am still alive today and lucky enough to still enjoy this sport we call riding because of my brothers and sisters on the forum. Thank you all.
After a long night of call I sat before the three attendings and presented my cases from the night before. Internship, boot camp if you will, became a founding father of the concept of insult to injury and kicking you when you’re down. When I finished the first presentation one of the attendings sighed and asked “Does he have insight?” I looked over to my resident for help. I’d never been asked this. It would be a question to be answered throughout my career in dealing with patients with complex disease.
The resident answered “No” for me but seeing my blank expression, the attending threw me a bone and expounded on the topic of insight. It was meant to examine a patient’s understanding of their disease. Did they understand the seriousness of the diagnosis? Did they realize the complexity of the illness; the numerous treatments, surgeries, or procedures that would follow? But what it really meant, and I only truly understood this years later, was did they realize we cannot cure this and that they will suffer or die from our lack of understanding?
Insight implied looking inside oneself for the answers. Insight meant that you have been given all of the available information from outside sources and now, in this final stage, you would think about this information. You would include vital pieces and exclude useless ones. And then you would make a presentation. Not to a superior, but to yourself. And from this you would draw the conclusion that was not given to you by someone else.
Insight is serious. It demands silence, countenance, and all the faculties of the mind at once. Only then can you come to the conclusions you were meant to find. And frequently these conclusions were serious as well. They are sad or somber as they have many times revealed reduced choices for the future and asked acceptance, from you, of the remaining choices. It asked that you not struggle to find the choices which are no longer available to you.
Whereas insight is solitary and somber, wisdom is congenial and social. Wisdom is light-hearted and does not occupy the entire mind. Wisdom can be offered, even when the mind is busy with many tasks. Wisdom was meant to be sought and to be shared. Wisdom can only be acquired through years of experience. Years of experience do not guarantee wisdom however. Rather, it is offered, and a lucky few, an insightful few, took hold of the offer. Wisdom provided us with reproducible consequences from our choices so that mistakes were not made twice. Wisdom is a catalogue of experience and the ability to call up the applicable experience for each choice moving forward, such that it might guide you safely forward.
Wisdom that is not shared is crude next to that which is provided freely. It has not been honed by the process of shared experiences, which greatly outnumber the experience of an individual. Shared experience allows us to shape our wisdom into a final product. This product can now be offered to those with few or no experience. The lucky few, the insightful few, will recognize wisdom and accept it enthusiastically as it offers them a short cut to their goals.
Unlike insight, wisdom is happy because wisdom reveals choices that were unseen and would not be seen but for the giver of wisdom. Wisdom keeps you safe. And wisdom is the constant companion of insight. They need each other, as they are the checks and balances of the mind’s decision making process. They are, indeed, the “Chutes and Ladders” of decision making. Insight and wisdom let us climb the ladders, avoiding the harshness of countless errors and the long way around. When we lack insight and reject wisdom we take the long way and in the worst case we lose ground through the chutes.
My friends and family kid me about my time on these forums. Where they see unsubstantiated opinions from faceless individuals I see insight and wisdom. Through the aggregate experience of countless individuals I have honed my skills, avoided chutes, and climbed ladders. I am still alive today and lucky enough to still enjoy this sport we call riding because of my brothers and sisters on the forum. Thank you all.
