Where Has All the Wisdom Gone? (Long Time Passing)

I feel inclined to add a post today without much thought as to the subject. I have been religiously surfing the internet on different subjects. How is it that we as a people are so intolerant of others, and their opinions? We argue our points we get all fired up over an issue and then we don't step back and consider what others think. We don't consider the validity of their ideas. We often look at ourselves and our opinions as the best and sometimes only option. How can that be with the limited knowledge that we possess? You may think that you are expert on a subject, and yet you have so much more to learn about it.


When I was teaching it was actually funny to pick up an old science book and go through it. I once had an astronomy teacher in college tell us all at the beginning of the course that 90% of what we learned that semester would be a lie. We can become so arrogant with our so called knowledge! We do not have the slightest notion as to the purity of truth. We are in embryo form as to our progress here. When we acknowledge this and finally come to the realization that we have a long way to go when it comes to learning, then maybe we will begin to listen to others. Maybe then we will have an open enough mind to change our course on things when new information is presented. Just recently in the last election Mitt Romney was accused of flip-flopping on an issue when all he really did was to evolve in his thinking.

We are all human beings. We are imperfect whether we graduated with honors or never made it through middle school. I have lived long enough to realize that an education no matter how extensive does not make a person smart. I could learn a lot more from a farmer that has raised peaches for 20 years, than someone with a college education in peach production. If I put the two together then I will advanced just that much further. I am a college graduate with a Masters Degree and I would love to go back after a Doctorate but that does not make me smart. It will give me more current knowledge but until I learn to listen and respect others I will remain in the dark, only thinking that I am in the light.

Let me end with an example. My wife has fibromyalgia. This sickness is still pretty new but we are learning more each day. She was going regularly to our doctor and they pretty much gave her some helpful hints as to how to manage it but really didn't have a cure. She had her good days and bad days. Finally the migraine headaches caught up with her and put her down. She couldn't even get up they were so bad! She was throwing up and pretty much having just a terrible existence.



A friend of ours told us that we should go and see a Chinese doctor in Portland OR. He said he had gone to this doctor with diagnosed Hepatitis C and that after 6 months of drinking this guys tea he was now free of something that has no cure. I was to say the least skeptical along with my wife. The same guy told us that another of our friends had gone in with uncontrolled blood pressure and after 2 months of drinking this tea she was now off of all her medication. It all just sounded ridiculous. How could drinking tea cure these things when our educated doctors could not? The friends were adamant that we give it a try and as skeptical as we were we went to see him. This guys office was located next to a Subway Sandwich Shop. He was old, gray and spoke no English. The guy that was interpreting for him explained to us that this old guy was one of the premier doctors in China. He had actually served as doctor for the politburo and at one time for the premiere. The place looked like a voodoo shop with jars of roots and who knows what else on the shelves.



The examination was the old guy poking around my wife's stomach at her organs. Once he examined her, he wrote out a prescription in Chinese. The other guy opened up jars and started throwing things into a big sheet of cheese cloth. They said the tea would be cooked down and ready in an hour. We waited and for the next 6 weeks my wife drank a packet of nasty tasting tea twice a day. She has rarely had a headache since and her fybromyalgia symptoms are gone.The philosophy I came to find out was that are bodies have the ability to heal themselves from almost any malady. The reason that they don't is because they are out of balance. If might be because of the air that we breath with its toxins. It might be because of the food we eat with the pesticides and hormone additions. It could be from the medicines that we take. Whatever it is this guy could tell where the deficiency's were and the tea filled those voids bringing things into balance and allowing the body to heal itself. His boys were actually attending the University there in Portland and studying western medicine. He was there to support them. When he finished with any of his patients he told them to go and see their regular doctor and to check with them on their progress.

I learned so much from this guy! Listen to others and humble yourself. When you do that then you will become wise. That is true intelligence. We are never to old to admit that we are wrong and to move on in search of new knowledge.