I may have stupidly revealed this secret before, but since it is already probably out there, here it is again; I have been on a lifelong quest to find and learn wisdom.
Yep, that’s right. I have been doing a lot of fishing in the well of understanding to try and find the ultimate rainbow trout of truth. Of course, it is only incredibly stupid people who actually believe that trout can survive living in a well.
So I have been looking at a lot of what passes for wisdom in this world, and find that for the most part, it consists of a bunch of words written by dead guys.
Boris Pasternak qualifies. He is a dead guy. At least, he has been since 1960. Pasternak is a Russian. His novel Doctor Zhivago is about the period in Russian history between the beginnings of the revolution in 1905 and the First World War. He won the Nobel Prize for Literature for it in 1958, but the Soviet government, embarrassed by it, forced him to turn down the prize.
Nobel novelist is probably something that qualifies a dead guy as wise.
I am led to believe that he knew where to fish for the trout of truth.
I like the idea that the real value in literature, as in the life it portrays, is found in the ordinary. And yet, Boris speaks of it oxymoronically as extraordinary. Wisdom is apparently found in contradicting yourself.
I like the idea of a world infused with compassion. But is he saying love may lead to misperceptions of how the objects of our love are mistreated?
This man saw Leo Tolstoy on his deathbed when he was himself but a boy. Like Tolstoy he questioned everything. And like Tolstoy, when the end came, he believed in hope for the future.
The worst part of getting wisdom from dead guys, guys you never met in real life but only came to know from books, is that you cannot argue with them. You can’t question them about what they meant, or ask them if they ever considered one of your own insights. You never get to tell them if you happen to fall in love with their ideas.
Richard Feynman is a physicist, scientist, and writer of science-based wisdom.
Richard Feynman is also dead since 1988.
He is considered a brainiac superhero by science nerds everywhere, and not only do his words still live in his writings, but so does his math.
But what he is actually saying is, that in truth, we really never “know” anything. It can never be fully understood and maybe the questions that we ask are more important than the answers.
Wait a minute! Feynman, are you calling me a fool?
Of course, I can’t get an answer out of him. Richard Feynman is dead.
But he does suggest what I can do about it.
I had or worked with a large number of teachers in my life who would be absolutely horrified by that advice.
So, what conclusion can I reach other than that Richard Feynman thinks I’m a fool even though he never met me?
I don’t really know. Maybe I should learn the lesson that you must be careful when you listen to dead guys talking. But I do like what some of them say. Perhaps that is my trout of truth.
Catch a Falling Star 