You can be wise, but why?

There are people saying that increasing wisdom is the goal of life. Wether it is so or not seem for me impossible to know, yet I believe wisdom to be quite important in life, if for nothing else then simply for making good decisions that you don't have to regret, or at least know why you do.

To be able to apply wisdom in a reasonable way one needs also knowledge to apply it on. Majority of people separate knowledge/intelligence and wisdom, and from real life examples I agree that those are two different things.

Then those who pursue enlightenment must acquire both, in order to have any success. Obvious question arise then, how? Gathering of knowledge is well established practice in the developed world, one goes to school and universities to learn the facts revealed thus far in a certain field. Hence ones higher education, where one has more freedom to choose, should agree with the personal interests so that knowledge gathered during that time does not only help you to find work and do it properly but also to help you with your personal enlightenment.

Enlightenment is loosely used to describe highest level of whatever one is determined to acquire.

So we know how to get knowledge, but how about wisdom?

It is understood that wisdom comes with experience, and can not be learned, but must be practiced.

Thinking is a way to practice wisdom, thinking alone or with a group of people, if you are lucky enough to have people around you that are interested in the same thing. Also to think before doing everyday things that we usually do automatically. Meditation focuses the mind, making it easier.

The reason I am writing this is about how to acquire experience. Well you might think now, everyone knows how to get experience, but problem is I don't have the skills / money / courage / time / freedom / something or other, to get that experience.

Let me then ask you this, aren't majority of people older then you also wiser then you? And did they all had what you “need” to get their wisdom? The trick is in the amount of different experiences over time, not in specifics. Then it seems that wisdom will come to you when you are old and experienced enough, and it will, but there is a simple way to speed up the process, the answer is: Live faster.

The idea of living faster did came to me about half a year ago, but until recently I didn't know how to make cense of it, what does it mean to live faster, what should I do?

For couple of weeks ago I did start a project that I have been going around and thinking about. It was nothing complicated, nothing hard to test, but yet I spend endless hours thinking about it imagining different outcomes for two years. It was then I realized how little I experienced, how slow I was living, I spend two years thinking about something that took me one day of work to test. I thought I didn't had the time and energy to really do it, while in reality I was wasting enormous amounts of time and energy thinking about it and getting frustrated.

Don't misunderstand me now, thinking things through is good, but there is a limit, there are things that need to be thought about, and things that need to be done. Only thinking about things that can easily be done is equally bad as doing things without thinking, but I know that majority only thinks without doing because it is safer that way. But being safe, only thinking/imagining, brings no experience, hence the life is standing still, and wisdom increases very slowly, if at all. Some people all so far gone into being safe that they don't do simple things even though they know that nothing will happen.

Here are some examples to make the point clear.

You like a girl/boy but doing nothing about it, hoping she/he will notice you one day.
Chances are slim, but fantasies in your head are many, how to approach, what to say, what it will be like and so on. My experience tells me, it will never happen, but will continue as it is until you two eventually separate, by changing work, school, cities and so on. And you can spend years thinking about it, and years after you two no longer see each other, when it only takes couple of words to find out.

You have something on your mid you want to say to somebody, and it is keeping you awake at nights, don't be “safe”, find the right moment and say it.

You are thinking about doing something, but you want to think about it first, good, do think, sit down and do nothing else, just think about that, and if you thought it through and decided not to act on it, then let go of it, if you can't let go, then do it, there is no point of thinking any longer.

I think therefore I am! [René Descartes]
I do therefore I live! [Me?]

This is the difference between existing and living, and without life comes no experience.
To live fast is to cut those endless years of pointless thinking and do in order to experience. We do make mistakes in life, and it is safer only to imagine what doing would be like. In order not to make any mistakes there is no other chose but not to live.

To do or not to do?
Pick one and do it!

Wisdom comes with experience, and more experience you have the wiser your are, but people we consider wise are the ones that can help us when we have a problem or hard decisions to make. Hence to be considered wise one must experience many things.

The question is then, why would anybody want to be wise? It sounds painful.