The Root of Wisdom: Self-Reflection Right here at the University of Florida, my undergraduate and law school alma mater, a researcher named Monika Ardelt has uncovered something that may not sound remarkably surprising, but it can really tell you a lot about the mysteries of this world if you take time to savor it. Dr. Ardelt is a sociologist at the University of Florida, and the study that she led essentially revealed that wisdom comes with age if people learn to feel and reflect, but our current American culture does little to promote that, since we live in an environment that reveres logic and efficiency. Ardelt says:

"When you think like a wise person - like Jesus Christ, Buddha, or Gandhi - they don't just have book knowledge, they know how to deal with life partly because of deep insight and compassion for others."

According to Ardelt, it is our fast-paced and fact-based society (and its emphasis on cognitive skills over elements that round out our person) that keeps wisdom from materializing in so many of those around us. I don't know about you, but one of my goals in life is to someday achieve some form of wisdom, and it seems to me that the world in which we are living is doing very little to help me achieve that.

To be able to scientifically measure all of this, Ardelt developed a scale to measure wisdom in the elderly that contains three essential elements:

1. Cognitive - A deeper kind of knowledge and the ability to understand life;

2. Affective - Feelings of sympathy and compassion for others; and

3. Reflective - The ability to develop insights by looking at events from many perspectives.

Her study was published in the May issue of Research on Aging, one of the leading publications examining geriatric issues, an increasingly important matter to a nation whose Baby Boomers are growing older than this can of pickled Chinese eels I bought last year at Tim's Chinese Market in Homestead and haven't looked at since.

I read the following, gulped, and marveled at the absolute ocean of relevance in my life and the circumstances regarding this that have surrounded problems that I have witnessed in the past few years:

"By overcoming egocentricity - basically blaming other people or circumstances for your own situation - it decreases your self-centeredness, and you are able to see reality in more objective ways."

Wow! The number of human beings walking along the streets of our planet blaming others for their own lot in life (when it is apparent to the rest of us that their circumstances are the result of their own laziness or bad decision-making) is astonishing, isn't it? How can it be that we're so able to see these in others when we clearly are completely self-objective about ourselves? How can they all be so "egocentric" when we're completely able to view ourselves so objectively? Wait... that couldn't possibly mean...?

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Ardelt had 180 men and women between the ages of 52-87 complete written surveys assessing these three characteristics, and they were recruited from a cross- section of 18 religious, social and civic groups contacted through random word of mouth and telephone directory sources. The surveys covered general well- being, purpose in life, subjective health, history of depression, and attitudes toward death. Another excellent quote:

"To become wise, you must at least have the desire for human development and spiritual growth. To simply say, 'This is the way I am and there's nothing I can do about it.' doesn't bode well for wisdom."

The following was extremely interesting, though the press release that I read, in addition to the other articles, didn't elaborate, and I didn't have time to contact her before writing this. Unlike Western cultures which stress the cognitive dimension, Eastern philosophies tend to integrate the cognitive, reflective, and affective elements. She indicated that the role of religion and spirituality in aging is now a part of geriatric curricula in American universities, suggesting that we've learned a bit from our Eastern friends. In any event, it occurred to me that this could well have something to do with the extraordinary compassion and sensibility I have found over the years in Filipino/a nurses and rehab professionals, and why American patients in geriatric facilities seem to love them so much... perhaps some of those sensibilities are so much more noticeable in persons from that culture. Perhaps folks from that part of the world are able to empathize a little better with the elderly because they've been assimilated in cultures that have learned to value the wisdom that we, as Americans, simply don't see in our old folks.

Well, I'm off to self-reflect some more with a beer and a fishing rod, since I should still be out on the boat when you guys are reading this. (I did this a week in advance.) Now on to more conventional views...

Let's Go Fly a Kite

One of our faithful readers sent us a very illustrative article regarding children residing at the Al Shati refugee camp in the Gaza Strip. The article was written by James Bennet, and it's about an annual tradition at the refugee camp: when the summer warms over the desert and the sea winds build the children of the camp build tissue or newspaper kites, and they let the kites rise to the sky over their tented homes. In his words: "flecks of white, red, or green against an invariably blue sky. Their taut, curving strings lead as invariably to the hands of children who are backing, pausing, and backing again toward the sea, into the wind, upturned faces a study in transported concentration."

As he interviewed the children, their faces were filled with delight, and one of them explained that his anger was gone, his thoughts were in the sky, and all of his frustration over the living conditions and the ongoing problems with Israel were temporarily shelved, uplifted into the wind and forgotten, if only for a moment. Bennet writes that most of the children flying kites are boys, but some of the girls do the same thing, and that the kite flying is a major adventure at the camp, since they don't have much to do. As one little boy said:

"When I fly the kite, I think I'm on a different planet... I imagine myself someplace else."

As the years and decades unfold and the Palestinian and Israeli issue remains unsolved, it is these immigrant children sharing one Holy Land who continue to suffer and to seek escape from a homelessness that has been so ingrained into their culture that the reasons behind it, their shared common roots stemming all the way back to the books of the Old Testament, have been long forgotten. One can only hope and pray that the fences will soon come down from around the Al Shati refugee camp, and no more paper kites will be lost to crying children with nothing else to do. In the meantime, "let's go fly a kite," as Mary Poppins said.

Canada Bound

The Associated Press recently published an article, forwarded to me by Bernard, regarding the increasing social policy differences between the U.S. and Canada. Apparently, it has gotten so visible that some disenchanted Americans are actually heading north to try their hands at a "kinder, gentler" version of the North American way of life. The article did not have a byline as I found it, but you can probably find it pretty quickly if you want to read the whole thing by searching the phrase "few discontented Americans Canada" on any of the major search engines.

The article, which was published July 19, presented example after example of folks citing things ranging from low cost of living to the Cuban embargo to universal health care to tough gun control laws are saying that they finally decided to give the Great North a legitimate chance. The article further mentioned that liberals are finding two Canadian policies - the decriminalization of marijuana and the legalization of same-sex marriages (both of which are pending) - as indicative of a society more enlightened than our own.

I, myself, feel much more at home in the Islands and the Banana Republics, but this article and the quotes provided demonstrate what a wonderful place Canada continues to be.