The fool views himself as more unique and others as more generic; the wise views himself as more generic and others more unique.*
(Nassim Taleb)

Whoever walks with the wise becomes wise, but the companion of fools suffers harm.**

Wisdom is less what we know and more how we live, an attitude of wanting to live out what we know towards goodness, always desiring to know more.

We are, at our best, lifelong learners taking time each day to reflect on how well we are giving expression to the things we know and value.

Richard Rohr identifies four splits we make to create our False Self:

1. We split from our shadow self and pretend to be our idealised self.
2. We split our mind from our body and soul and live in our minds.
3. We split from death and try to live our life without any “death.”
4. We split from other selves and try to live apart, superior, and separate.^

We’re all prone to these dangers, at times moving towards our False Self, at other times towards our True Self.

Wisdom notices, Foolishness doesn’t.

(*From Nassim Taleb’s The Bed of Procrustes.)
(**Proverbs 13:20)
(^From Richard Rohr’s Immortal Diamond.)