How Experience and Mistakes Forge True Wisdom

A note to young leaders.

On the importance of action.

There are two levels at which truths can be apprehended – intellectually by the mind; or viscerally by the soul.

The former is knowledge, the latter is wisdom.

And rarely is wisdom achieved other than through experience. We can read a truth, comprehend it, agree with it, even advise it to others – and still not fully integrate it.

Experience on the other hand is the most reliable of teachers. And yet, in the words of Oscar Wilde, experience is but the name we give to our mistakes.

For without mistakes, and the loss that often attends them, much of our wisdom would be forgotten or foregone.

This is the paradox of wisdom: it longs to minimise error but grows only by committing it.

And how then is this contradiction to be reconciled?

By committing yourself to a life of action. This is the only way to satisfy wisdom’s mission and its ambition, at the same time.

This is why we are called to live a life of action – a life of action is a life of wisdom.