Recently I was reading an article in the newspaper and it was raving about how this was the "information age" and that the "industrial age" had passed. The author showed that narrow vision of a techo geek who has vast amounts of information at his finger tips but little experience and clearly no wisdom. Information did not make the chair you are sitting on, industry did.
Clearly there is more information available to all of us than ever before. Should you wish you can spend hours each evening surfing the internet and reading web sites and blogs on any topic you desire. This is absolutely a good thing. Information enables a thinking person to expand their horizons. Note I said a thinking person, information to a non-thinking person is just videos of cats playing and girls wondering around in small costumes, it is just T.V., another form of mass entertainment.
Once information is in a thinking person's head they can begin to apply it. They make prototypes, they experiment and often try new things. Remember how often you have bought or downloaded a plan that you then modified to suit your situation. That is bringing your experience to bear on the information you have. That information was nothing until you used it.
Wisdom is all that available information applied to real life as we accumulate experience and then filter and distill our experiences. Time and practice provide the filters that enables us to make and do things better. Wisdom also keeps us safer and wisdom gives us a depth of understanding that enables us to teach. Sometimes that level of skill and experience is called Mastery. A level to which we aspire but not all reach.
Wisdom deals with big ideas, wisdom says take care of your health, don't play with fire and the like. My father-in-law, Josef Locher who passed away before I knew him was by all accounts a wise man. One of the things he taught my wife, and she has taught me applies to life and life in the woodshop.
"Du kannst nicht alle Hasen Jagen". (you can't hunt all the rabbits). Wood work is a vast and wonderful field including everything from house framing to marquetry. There is a tool for each and every job and often more than one way to do any or all of the tasks.
I look at blogs and web sites and sigh over the amazing carving, inlay work, furniture design etc. etc. etc. I see.
No one can Master all wood working, you can't hunt all the rabbits. Find the rabbit that gives you satisfaction and hunt it.
I have learned which rabbits I should hunt. Have you?
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