Episode 78: A Couple Brain Worms

Transcript

I've had two phrases slash concepts, I guess they're phrases, rattling around in my head
over the last few weeks. I know at least one of them I came across via some, you know,
YouTube short or LinkedIn post or something, right? It's one of these, like, you know,
bite-sized, quote-unquote, you know, motivational kind of things that you'd stumble upon,
which usually isn't really my cup of tea, but for whatever reason, this one kind of stuck with me,
and it's just, it's been like a brain worm. The other one is more of a, you know, phrase that
you hear all the time, but I guess I never really understood or really sat and thought about what
it meant. The one that popped up on some, again, probably some social feed somewhere,
and I'm paraphrasing here, but it went like this. It said, you know, dumb people don't learn.
Smart people learn by doing. And wise people learn by listening. And the overall idea here
was, if you skip the first part, you know, I'm not all that interested in the, you know,
the part that's like dumb people don't learn, whatever. What's more interesting to me is this
distinction between smart and wise, which I always thought, and this is a total aside and basically a
tangent, but what I always found it really interesting in, you know, I grew up playing a
certain amount of Dungeons and Dragons, and statistically, like in terms of your statistics as a
player or as a character, they broke intelligence and wisdom into two different categories and
explained them differently. And I always thought that was a really interesting distinction.
The general idea being, you know, intelligence being more about kind of how quickly do you catch
on to things and how much, like sort of how analytical you are almost. Whereas the wisdom piece
is much more, you know, how much foresight do you have? How much of a big picture do you see?
Like that kind of stuff. So I thought this, this saying, maybe it caught on as I'm talking through
this. One of the reasons it probably drilled its way into my brain is because of that connection to
D&D. But I thought it was an interesting concept, right? This, this idea that a smart person learns by
doing. So the idea is that basically anywhere you throw a smart person, they'll figure it out kind of
thing, just by some combination of trial and error and intuiting their way through it and whatever,
learning on the fly, so to speak. Whereas a wise person is going to first learn by listening to the
experiences of others. I'll admit, you know, assuming I fall into one of these two categories
that is not just, you know, the category of people who are dumb and don't learn anything.
Assuming I fall into one of these categories, I would have to admit that I probably fall more
into the category of, you know, learn by doing. And I've always taken this as something of a point
of pride, but because I do tend to be the kind of person, if you throw me into a situation,
I'll figure it out pretty quickly. What I haven't always been great at is listening to or even asking
for the wisdom of others who maybe have been there already. It's something that I'm working on. And
again, maybe this, this saying, this, this saying phrase, truism, you know, whatever the hell this
thing is, anecdote, not anecdote, parable. I don't know. Maybe it just hit at the right time
where I had already been thinking about this a bit. And then this kind of reinforced it and it
broke it into this, this segmentation of wisdom versus intelligence, which also connects back to
it. Like I can build a narrative here around why this kind of brain wormed its way into my thoughts,
but either way, it's something I've been working on in past years is doing a better job at when people
share their experience with something like trying to pay a little more attention to that.
Not that like, I don't, I'm not, I don't think that just because someone else experiences something
in one way means that you will experience it in the exact same way whenever you go through it.
But the additional context, you know, is rarely going to be harmful. There are situations in which
you can get so much context around something that you then think, you know, already walking in the door,
what's going on. And then it gives you some like bad, it starts you with some bad assumptions
potentially. But generally speaking, if you're able to kind of, the more infinite context you're
able to get, as long as you don't then turn those into assumptions later, I think is a good thing.
And it's definitely something that I've, I've wanted to work more on. I think there are times
throughout the course of my life that I learned by doing and learning by doing was learning the hard
way, right? Whereas if I had taken a second to absorb, not literally a second, but if I had taken
more time to try to absorb some of the experience that other people were trying to impart on me,
having been through it, that maybe I wouldn't have had to learn quite such the hard way.
Because it can be subtle. And I think that's where I missed, like when I examined my life,
and some of this might just be, you know, retconning, right? But as I examine my life in reverse,
I suppose, there were times that people did say things to me, but didn't necessarily put a fine
enough point on it where I didn't pick it up until it was too late, right? And I don't mean that to
sound, I think I phrased that poorly. That makes it sound like it was in some way they're doing.
It was because I wasn't paying close enough attention to subtleties and people's points
that maybe I missed some of the intended meaning. Let's put it that way. So anyway,
that's the first phrase. And I don't know, like, I think there's a lot of truth to that. And I think
that there's, you know, something to be learned there about trying to spend more time listening
and less time doing. If you're the type of person who tends to just find that time and time again,
you learn things well, but you learn them the hard way.
And the other phrase, and this one I've heard for years, it's in song lyrics, you hear it all the
time. But I guess I never knew what it was supposed to mean. The phrase is wherever you go, there you
are. And I always just sort of took this as like a, almost like a silly, like non phrase, like
it's just kind of like, to me, it always was just like saying something like, you know, well,
red things are red, like wherever you go, there you are. Right. Like, well, no, no kidding.
It just, I never thought much about it. Um, but recently I saw, I guess what this is supposed to
actually mean, which is that, you know, it's almost like saying like, you can't run away from who you are
kind of thing. So if, even if you go somewhere, you're still the same person you, you were like,
you're there now, right? Wherever you go, it's still you. You can't run away from yourself kind
of thing, or maybe put a little more, little less pessimistically. You'll always be you,
no matter what the scenario is. So for better or for worse, just because you change your environment
or the things around you or your life situation or whatever, doesn't mean that you're actually any
different. You're still whoever you are. So I thought it was an interesting, and it, it, it,
it's the kind of phrase that you hear so much, or at least I've heard so much. I never thought
much about it. And now it's giving kind of new meaning to the context in which I hear that phrase.
The other thing, and this is again, kind of an aside, but it kind of reminds me and I'll link
to this in the, in the show notes. There's a, there's an SNL sketch, uh, sketch with, uh, Adam Sandler
where he's, um, I think he's playing, uh, a travel agent or something. I have to go find it. The,
the, the point is he's like a part of a travel agency and the kind of the punchline joke in the
whole thing is like, uh, you know, he's kind of sitting there and he's saying, you know, we can
send you to Greece, but I want to be very clear about what we can and can't do for you. We can send
you to Greece, but you will still be you when you get to Greece. So if you are an unhappy person,
you will just be unhappy, but in Greece, you know, I'm not doing it justice here, but it's a pretty
funny little thing. I'll try to find it and put it in the show notes. But anyway, yeah. So, so
wherever you go, there you are. Um, this again, probably struck a chord with me because I think
about this sort of thing, right? Like I would very, I I've kind of grown up in the same area
most of my life and I would really like to get out of this area ultimately and go live some other
places, but it's a good reminder, right? Of where you get there, you're still going to be the same
person. So you got to kind of come to terms with that person that you are and like, be good with that
because then when you get there, you're good. Cause it doesn't matter really where you are. And
again, I'm, I'm where you are. I don't just mean like geographically, but whatever you're doing in
life, whatever changes you encounter, you're still you just experiencing those changes. Right. So
I don't know, just a couple of phrases I've been rolling around for me. Um, I'm not a huge like
quotes and phrases guy, but occasionally ones just kind of worm their way in. Uh, and these were
two that did that for me. If you have some love to hear them, you know, things that just kind of like
always sit around in your head, maybe inform the way you view certain things, or maybe just ones that
you've heard recently that you find interesting. So anyway, always feel, as always feel free to,
to write that sort of thing in. Um, but these are two for me that have been very present in the last
month or so.