Pride and Wisdom

Daily Meditation #372 — 3/3/2023

There is a supposed African saying, “If you are filled with pride you have no room for wisdom.”

Much like an urn, we cannot be filled to the top with both wine and oil at the same time.

Pride can be a foolish thing to be filled with, especially at a young age while we are so inexperienced with love, pain, loss, work, and, well…the world.

It blinds us and paralyzes us from seeing our true position in the world, building us onto a Tower of Babel with a fragile base far, far below. One gust of truth sends it collapsing down, and us deep into the depths beneath.

Wisdom however, so far as I can tell, is an understanding that even if we have studied something all our life, even the newest disciple in the field coming in with a fresh perspective and a unique way of forming a question can make us realize we may not know.

Wisdom in so many ways is the opposite of pride.
It is the knowing that we were a fool, are now only a slightly better fool, and tomorrow will yet remain a fool.

But a fool willing to know they know nothing.

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These are distillations from my coming book “YouDaimonia: the Ancient Philosophy of Human Flourishing.”