TRUE WISDOM IS ACKNOWLEDGING IGNORANCE

Sir,

Steve Jobs once said; “Stay hungry, stay foolish.” Being foolish is not stupidity, but humility. It is acknowledging your position, which is low and one of ignorance. And humility is a prerequisite for learning, gaining knowledge and truth. For every knowledge we get leads us to more knowledge. And this happens in crescendo without any diminuendo. We all get humiliated now and again. When we think we know and are doing just fine, life and circumstances prove to us that we are far away from being self-sufficient.

Humiliating

One of the humiliating moments of my life came years ago when I lived in South Africa; I would visit Soweto now and again. One time I was at this particular home, the people were speaking Sotho and I knew nothing about the language. There was a 13-year-old boy who knew the language perfectly. He would even call his dog to come to him and it understood and did just that and he would send it away and it would respond accordingly.
But here I was, a fully grown man, understanding nothing; it was a humiliating moment. The boy became my tutor and I was his student; and I needed to be humble and allow the little boy to be my teacher. As Emerson has it: “This is important and beautiful.” There I was as a child, enquiring and the boy was maturity, teaching me Sotho.

Pride

Many organisations suffer because those in high positions have too much pride to receive advice or feedback from others within. Socrates, one of the greatest minds to ever live, stated that he was great among the Athenians because he realised that he was ignorant. And true wisdom is acknowledging that one is ignorant. Emerson said: “Everyone is my superior.” This is profound wisdom. It took me a bit of time to fully comprehend it.
Your little child or brother or sister has some quality about them that makes them greater than you. They are your superiors in some way. But somehow you see a person nodding his head pretending they understand when they do not understand when a friend mentions a big English word or something they don’t know. They are ashamed to be discovered that they don’t know. They don’t want to be humiliated and be like a little child. Our pride prevents us from real learning, such that one may ask this question: “Are you really what you pretend to be?”

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