The Wisdom of Gratitude and Humility

Even the most successful life, as measured by societal achievements, has a past littered with errors and random events, in addition to effective decisions and actions. Wisdom requires that we accept this mixed past and live authentically in the present. The emotions that enable us to accomplish this task are gratitude and humility. One alternative response, excessive pride in our accomplishments, requires us to be untruthful about the mistakes, close calls, and sheer luck that led us to the present. At the other extreme, an alternative emotional response is a sense of helplessness, insecurity or frustration at the number of things that are beyond our control. Gratitude and humility recognize the truth about our past while allowing us a sense of ease and achievement.

A clear example of how effective decisions and actions mix with luck and random events to produce success is seen is the story of Bill Gates, the founder of Microsoft. If Gates had not been able to find and buy the MSDOS software from its creator for a small sum, and then license it to IBM, his life would have been very different, and we might all be using Macs instead of PCs for our computer needs. So do we just credit Gates with justifiable vision and shrewdness, but ignore the luck and randomness involved in this seminal event?

The ancients had an understanding of the role of randomness or chance in human events. Greek mythology humanized it as the fates, and in Chinese tradition, it plays a central role as memorialized in the I-Ching, Book of Changes. The West African Ifa tradition is another form of divination from different culture. Perhaps surprisingly, even in the Judeo-Christian tradition, with its vision of an all-powerful God, chance has a key role. In the Bible, the will of God was often divined by the tossing a kind of dice, named the Urim and Thummim, which gave the answer yes or no, guilty or innocent.

It seems that wisdom develops from encounters with what is beyond our control, and the need to be empowered despite those forces. When we examine human development over the life cycle, we expect people to develop wisdom with experience; particularly as they approach old age. We understand wisdom to be more than just knowledge or technique, though those are essential components. Intuitively, we understand wisdom as having a sense of integration of knowledge and experience resulting in an acceptance of oneself and one’s place in the universe. Psychologist Erik Eriksson best captured this in his last stage of adult development; which he characterized as a challenge of integrity versus despair, with the fruit of the conflict being wisdom. Once past middle age, a person begins to see the inevitability of death. The challenge is either to despair at mistakes and missed opportunities in one’s life or to integrate and accept all of one’s experiences and thus to achieve wisdom.

I think of wisdom as having seven dimensions, which I represent with the acronym SOPPHIA, the Greek word for wisdom. These are seven sets of skills or competencies that helps us achieve fulfillment. The first letter S represents emotional Self-awareness and Self-management. The O is for skills for understanding Others and managing relationships. The first P is for skills needed to clarify and pursue our life Purpose. The second P is for the ability to be Present and have Presence; to be reconciled with the past and open to the future. The H is for skills and habits necessary to maintain Health of body, mind and spirit. The I is for Innovation, the ability to generate creative ideas and to work with others to bring them into reality, where they can produce social and economic value. And finally, the A is for Assurance or faith, the ability to endure and persevere beyond reason.

Presence and Assurance are probably the two dimensions of wisdom that are most subtle and least reducible to a “how to” or technical method. They require an acceptance of the large role of chance, randomness, or fate in our lives. They require that we accept this without helplessness or fear. The emotions that help us to achieve this are gratitude and humility. We can deliberately practice the attitudes of gratitude and humility, which are not surprisingly very similar to the attitudes we adopt in meditation or prayer. With these attitudes, we induce a state of peace and acknowledgement of our limitations, but also feel empowered to make decisions and to take action to benefit others as well as ourselves.

I’m Dr. Bernard Brookes. You can reach me at www.sopphia.com.