How Can You Recognize a Wise Person When You Meet One?
On Tuesdays I write about the top voted question on Ask Berkun (see the archive). This week’s question is from Mike: How can you tell a wise person when you meet one?
“It is by no means uncommon to find men whose knowledge is wide but whose feelings are narrow. Such men lack what I am calling wisdom.”
– Bertrand Russell
If you can’t judge a book by its cover, how can you judge a person on their first impression? I’ve never liked the cliche about “you never get a second chance…” because it’s rarely true. Sure, if you spill a large coffee on someone’s lap, or set an entire dining room on fire, that would be hard to recover from on a first date, but most first interactions with people are terribly bland, no matter how wise either of you are. There just is no secret wise-person handshake nor a wise-person detection app for your phone.
Instead it takes an actual conversation with someone to learn who they are and how wise they might be. Starting conversations isn’t that hard, but there is a stupor that comes over most of us when we meet new people. Mostly, it goes like this: “Hi, how are you?” “I’m fine, you?” “I’m fine, thanks” <silence>. There’s not much chance to notice a wise person here. Our questionable social skills with strangers means there are hundreds of wise people we have met at parties, or stood next to at the bus stop, and never knew it.
I understand social anxiety and fear of embarrassment, but yet it’s still mystifying that after 10,000 years of civilized life our species still hasn’t recognized how little there is to lose in talking to strangers (in safe situations). Why not just assume they are wise or interesting? What is there really to lose if you’re wrong? It’s easy to end conversations with strangers and they likely didn’t even expect you to start one. Therefore, why not make an offer to get outside of the boring conventions of daily life we so often complain about? More to my point, it takes a bit of wisdom about wisdom to find wise people.
Wisdom means not only experience, but an understanding of how to apply life experience to the present. This means the most likely way to identify a wise person is to have a conversation about life, which likely means to talk about a shared, or personal, event that has already taken place. It’s in their own observations that their wisdom or insight will be revealed (or not). This could take the shape of lessons learned, of attitudes about relationships or work, or thoughts about regrets and future dreams.
Now it’d be weird to go up to a stranger, introduce yourself, and demand “tell me a personal story that reveals how wise you are.” Don’t do that. But in most social situations there is a fast path towards sharing stories. For example, at a party you can always ask anyone you don’t know: “how do you know <name of host of party>” which almost always has some kind of story as an answer (and you can show your curiosity by asking interesting questions about their story). And then you can reply with your own answer, but add some leading context that hints at a story, or question, of your own. Perhaps “We went to college together a decade ago, but I have to admit I’m not sure I belong here. There’s just too many people I don’t know.” Or even ask for advice about how to meet new people at events like this, a fun meta-trick (as by asking this to a new person you are using the question itself to solve them problem).
Perhaps my party socializing advice seems bound to fail, and you might be right. Maybe it’s easier to start with people we already know, like friends, coworkers and family. But even then there must be some kind of ignition event to wake another person up out of their daily routines and pay attention to the fact you are offering a more interesting kind of conversation. There is no guarantee they’ll be interested, or even understand that this is what you are offering. Yet if you don’t try, you’ll never know if you just overlooked a wise person. Someone has to (kindly) spark the chance for insight. To find wise people, you have to be wise enough, or perhaps just sufficiently bold, to reach out for them.
Part of the challenge in finding wise people is what we perceive as wisdom is filtered by the chemistry created by our personality meeting the personality of another. Someone can be very wise, but also irritating. For example I suspect Socrates, for all his wisdom, wasn’t particularly easy to get along with (yet the meetup group that bares his name can be a great way to meet wise people). Maybe you meet someone wise, but they offer their wisdom in a way that makes you feel belittled. Or they have bad breath, which you despise. Or maybe you don’t like their sense of humor, which diminishes your interest in their sage like thoughts. Just because they are wise doesn’t mean their wisdom will be palatable, or even comprehendible, to you.
If I had to list traits of someone wise, they’d include:
- Experienced – they’ve had interesting life experiences, both successes and failures, and they’ve asked good questions about them
- Humble confidence – they have clarity to share, or to challenge my thinking, but without a strong need to convince me of their view
- Insightful opinions – their thoughts invite consideration or raise my curiosity (even if I don’t agree with their conclusions)
- (I very much want to list a good sense of humor, but I’m convinced that reflects my own biases)
Which leads to the observation that wisdom isn’t a universal attribute. Some people are very wise about business, but are terribly ignorant about how healthy relationships work. Or they can give fantastic advice about life to others that they fail to practice in their own lives (a notorious failing of gurus, experts and authors too). The singular word wisdom doesn’t stretch to cover the complexities of how it, or it’s absence, plays out in a person’s life, or in the advice they give. People in their later years certainly have more life experience to work from, but that by no means guarantees they possess any more wisdom about life than someone much younger than they are: a person might accumulate ignorance, or bitterness, at the same, or a faster, rate than wisdom.
In the end, mostly what we want are interesting people who are interested in us. Who are friendly, perhaps charming, willing to share what they know and perhaps willing to listen for wisdom they don’t have in new people they meet. Framed this way the titular question of this essay is less daunting. Once you befriend one person with these attributes, it’s easier to find more. And who knows, maybe while we’re trying to find what we need, now and then we can be the “wise person” someone we meet (at a party) is looking to find.
Where have you met the wisest people you know? How did you recognize them? Leave a comment.
My comment is that you happily ended with two questions to give this blog conversation a little focus. In conversations with wise people, and groups, that works. I was perusing the classic The Organization Man where some company tried the (then new) fad of breaking a meeting down into groups, and got no results, without ever realizing the groups needed a focus question.
I once considered joining a racket ball club simply because the guy I sometimes talked to in the lobby seemed so wise.
At college I kept meeting someone in the big cafeteria who had become liberated in various areas, including learning to model nude. This was back when society did not know the word patriarchy. How wise? Once when she and another lady were examining failed relationships that they had learned from, one said, after checking that I wasn’t freaked out, “You will learn more from us than going to class.”
In the real world my wise CEO is too busy, but I can learn snippets in passing.
At parties I do much like you say above, Scott, complete with “fast path towards sharing stories.” Interestingly, when a once-a-year-for-coffee friend became a meet-by-random-chance friend, during our conversation to say “let’s meet less,” I said I realized that I had never told him any stories, even though I could tell his wife a story (anecdote) over the phone. Meaning, I guess, that stories can’t happen unless you feel leisurely, not rushed. Meaning, too, that my friend wasn’t into receiving knowledge from me personally.
“You will learn more from us than going to class.”
I think about this often at the professional events I attend – I tend to gravitate towards the people hanging out in the hallway, mostly ignoring the lecture or workshop or whatever ‘official’ thing is going on. I presume (perhaps projecting) that they are more interested in stories and conversations you can’t have in big rooms with dozens or 100s of people.
Most wise people in my experience are willing to help in some way as it is likely they have also had the luck of someone helping them.
I’m not sure. Can you be wise, but not kind? I think so. I want to believe that being wise makes you a nicer, more compassionate person – but I wonder about that. Perhaps being wise makes you realize that you *should* be compassionate, but the ability to deliver on that is something other than wisdom.
Maybe this is a Boulder CO thing as most wise people in town seem quite willing to help with things even if it’s a 5 min chat or quick email. Now you got me wondering how I can get a less local sample.
Don’t get me wrong – compassion and empathy are high ideals and I wish more people had them. I’m just not sure acting kindly, on it’s own, is wise. Good? yes. Noble? for sure. But if a person is naturally inclined to be kind, or has an ideal they’ve never questioned that blindly calls them to be kind, can we call that wise? I’m not sure.
Perhaps a component of being wise is not being a self-sabateur, as in: having your act together.
By this I mean IF having empathy, compassion, kindness and helpfulness is True, Good and Beautiful, and if such a state is not reached, THEN there are obstacles in the way.
I’m thinking of a self-help writer who taught future teachers at university. Jesse Lair, Ph. D., often wrote in I’m Not Much Baby, But I’m All I’ve Got that, after graduation, the lousy school teachers knew what a good teacher was, but they just couldn’t do it. As Scott put it, they didn’t have the ability to deliver. (I wonder if they felt horrible and helpless? Naw, they’d rationalize quite quickly)
My first impressions on the link between wisdom, compassion and empathy, are that there is one (a link). I believe compassion and empathy are implicit in one’s willingness to accept input from others openly without judgement. And I don’t think it is possible to be wise, without some ability to accept input openly and without judgement.
I won’t go as far as to say you can’t be wise without a strong sense of compassion/empathy, but for me there is a firm connection between them. Implicit, if not explicit.
What a wise person is, or what the word “wise” means, will vary from person to person. For me its enough to say a wise person is compassionate and empathetic. I acknowledge that is not a strict equivalence, but its close enough – for me.
Being wise means you understand not always compassionate on the situation
Scott: I hope you don’t mind that your readers are getting into the human characteristics of a wise person. Humans are quite interested in humans.
Jim Hunt: I like what you said.
My contribution: For the existence of wise people, and trees, I refer to Bruce Cockburn’s line, “If a tree falls in the forest, does anybody hear?”
To me, kindness is even more important than smarts, and so if a man did not have the characteristics that Jim notes, I would never hear him, because we would never converse.
An interesting post, Scott.
Just as while interviewing, I evaluate candidates based on the questions they ask me and NOT on their response to the interview questions – the best judgment about a person’s wisdom (or wavelength of like-mindedness, awareness, expertise, or common sense) comes from listening, and how they steer the discussions’ direction.
In professional community, the first step in knowing an individual is to see what they are writing (blog, or even social media posts if any), or what they are speaking (conferences). If they are neither writing not speaking, I find it difficult to connect – I may sound a bit harsh, but either writing or speaking (better if both) are so important for any professional in tech now.
Socrates was almost certainly insufferable. I just re-read The Apology and, even when arguing for his life, he can’t help but slip in some obvious humblebrags that would have totally irritated those who were sitting in judgment over him. Interestingly, that speech also reveals h
… that speech also reveals his sense of humour, which would have endeared him to those (like Plato) who ‘got’ him.
Indeed – and this all assumes that Socrates was real and not a character invented by Socrates.
Just as it is easy to figure out who happens to be a fool, so as it is easy to tell when someone is wise. Their words and actions conclude it all. I like someone who is full of wisdom such as King Solomon and the pioneer of modern-day philosophy(Socrates)
I am absolutely going with humor. But not just sense of humor but the art of knowing how and when to dispense it. Like you mentioned about experiences, humor is a great indicator of how someone has dealt with life.
I personally think, that a wise person has got: insight, councell and knowledge.
Wise people are despised most of the time because it takes wisdom to understand them and many people aren’t wise.
You know a wise person by their lifestyle.
When you wise you could be knowledgeable of the present n the wisdom is perhaps the forthcoming action then your understanding could avoid to the minimal, the least consequences to the situation
Thank you very much dear teacher for this nice sharing.