You recognise a majority of wise sayings by the general agreement they meet: “All this was accepted long ago!” “Yes, I know, I know!”
Good news is no news; a long list of sound advice, rarely followed. To the inpatient, and we are all impatient, most wise statements appear to be “common places” [1] and so they are, as they carry obvious common sense. They say something basic, elementary, trivial, old-time and worn-out. Something you have learned in kindergarten.
Eternally repeated, wisdom words sound like platitude. Ney, they are platitudes. ‘‘The facts a wise man knows are known by everybody’’[1].
The obviousness makes people incapable to pay attention. Repetition turned them into a background noise of tides munching the seashore. Parents and teachers are weary by the impossibility to draw attention of the young to sayings which they “know already” but they never felt, never owned and certainly do not apply. The new-comers must then learn from their own errors. And so they do: how long does it take for a child to learn that fire is hot?
Maybe, teaching old peoples’ wisdom too early is an unintentional vaccine against understanding it. Perhaps we must be sparing with wisdom mentioned to our children. What a waste!
Only later, when, for an example, not listening before speaking – this elementary error - did cost you sweat and pain and years lost, do you grasp at last the importance of the simple wisdom: “We have two ears and one mouth, to listen twice and talk one time.”
Why then say such things again? Because they are life-saving, of course. They are wisdom, sleeping. The miracle, the gift of the wise, is when they turn them into new understanding. Make old wisdom interesting and you will be a great sage.
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[1] Originally, “common place” meant an important issue of life, on which all normal people would agree, being for this reason shared, understood by all and convincing by itself. The despisers of rhetoric perverted this intelligent meaning into “something common and boring, uninteresting to consider”.
[2] Kekes, J. (1983). “Wisdom”, American Philosophical Quarterly 20: 277-286
[1] Originally, “common place” meant an important issue of life, on which all normal people would agree, being for this reason shared, understood by all and convincing by itself. The despisers of rhetoric perverted this intelligent meaning into “something common and boring, uninteresting to consider”.
[2] Kekes, J. (1983). “Wisdom”, American Philosophical Quarterly 20: 277-286
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