Understanding

There are basically three ingredients for understanding – Intelligence, Knowledge and Wisdom. Intelligence is a man’s ability to process information. Intelligence is like a machine, a machine which can be sharpened or slackened at the control of man. However, for any machine to function, it needs some input. For this particular machine, the input is called knowledge. Knowledge is awareness of the things happening around a person. Knowledge and Intelligence are like yin and yang. One is not complete without the other. The machine is useless without the input and the input is useless without a machine to process the input. The output of this machine called Intelligence is Wisdom. Wisdom is generated when one possesses information regarding the events surrounding him and the intelligence used to process the information he gathers from surroundings. However, many are not aware of the interdependency between knowledge and intelligence, in many instances; they are misunderstood to be the same. Hence, in today’s age, everyone is under the impression that reading newspapers and watching news channels helps them gather wisdom. However, those are merely channels to gather knowledge. Only when one processes the world events and interconnects them on a global scale, does he actually gain wisdom.

Wisdom is a journey rather than a one stop gas station. It requires a certain amount of silent introspection to draw upon the knowledge and to intelligently connect the dots. One’s quest for life is to move from innocence to wisdom while earning one’s living. In todays fast pace world, can one slow down to complete this journey called wisdom, remains to be seen.