How Wisdom Trumps Smart

When I was a student at the local school, I was often referred to as “smart.” And why would that be? Looking back through cardboard boxes of school stuff, I achieved the same high marks year after year. Which, I now understand, meant I was smart.

As a young academic, maybe, but as a full-rounded life observer, experienced in all the intelligence necessary to be really “smart” at that young age, I had no clue.

So, here is the dig.

Maybe it could be said that an academic is smart, but it is in the interpretation of what smart is that bears a short discussion.

What smart isn’t, though, is wisdom.

Smart can be a term describing academics, farming, finance, really most anything can be called smart with one caveat exception. The emotional and the spiritual. Smart people tend to process information logically, whereas wise people process the emotional, the spiritual, and the subtle side of the logic.

I finally figured out why someone called another “smart” rubbed me the wrong way. I was confusing smart with wise, and I saw my error in doing so.

Today, I hear people label another “smart” and immediately categorize which smart box fits into it. No longer am I confused.

And for wisdom, when one has learned the power of experience, knowledge, and sound judgment along with mental capability, or smart, of how things are accomplished, the outcome?

A competent and trustworthy person.

Powerful.