A Wheel Of Wisdom: A Philosophy For Life

As a muser about life, I have attempted yet again to formularise it. I know this is quite a forlorn prospect as it attempts to grasp something that can’t be grasped in its totality by mere words or symbols. Yet again, however, I’ve tried. This ‘Wheel of Wisdom’ as I will call it, does however present a legitimate aspect or perspective or way of looking at life.

This Wheel of Wisdom can be found at: http://epitemnein-epitomic.blogspot.com/2008/10/blog-post.html

The basic construction:

We have a couple of circles enclosing essentially three triangles, but its initial appearance reveals a circle enclosing a single triangle. There is much spiritual symbolism here. The circle comprises life and its ongoing nature through the realm of time. It continues to evolve and re-create itself though we perish. Spiritually, however, we continue to live as this circle demonstrates. The three sides to the triangle are parts of life. We can see them as ‘recovery-unity-service’ as those in Alcoholics Anonymous or other 12-step recovery programs might. Equally, from a Christian viewpoint, we could see these sides representing a ‘Father-Son-Holy Spirit’ Holy Trinity picture. (Actually, the former AA symbolism of ‘recovery-unity-service’ is Christian; recovery from sin; unity of fellowship in the church; service as ministry to the church and beyond as mission to the world.)

Working from within then:

Wisdom is the very centre of the construction. It is the output and the outcome. There are a number of determinants, however, that bring fruition to wisdom; that make it relevant:

Life Strategies:

Resilience – we cannot survive in life without a growing, burgeoning level of resilience to meet and grow from life challenges. What swallows us defeats us. I suggest that the two principal values of diligence and trust are required to bolster resilience. We must first diligently hold onto situations, whilst showing trust (faithfulness and courage), for resilience to work.

Relationships – these are keys to life. We cannot survive or thrive without relationships. It is pure and simple. Two principal values that make relationships work (among others) are shalom and balance. We must have peace in our relationships for them to work and we must make time for relationships and order them in the schemes that are our lives. Certainly there must be trust and respect, and diligence and prudence in them too, but it is shalom and balance that come to the fore most of all; we must be comfortable with people to want to relate, and to do it successfully at that.

Sacrifice – our lives will never truly go well until we learn the skill of sacrifice. This is a ‘heart’ thing; we sacrifice because we want to and because it feels right; it is voluntary. The two key principal values most relevant here are prudence and respect. Prudence because wise and appropriate sacrifice requires shrewdness and respect because it sees itself as no more important than the other person. Together, prudence and respect guide and ‘carry’ sacrifice.

Simplify-Focus-Overcome: A Life Resolution

Working anti-clockwise within the inner circle these headings come to the fore. If we simplify our lives at key junctures we gain perspective and we get to keep the whole. Again, focus is about confining ourselves to the important things; it’s limiting our thoughts and actions to those that are appropriate and relevant, discarding things that are transitory and wasteful, for instance. To overcome is a key life outcome. We must be overcomers to succeed in life.

There is relevance to the positioning of these three: we must desire simplification of our lives in order to be able to sacrifice; to relate well we must have focus; to overcome we must have resilience.

The Circle of Life:

Four key things are shown here. Two are life metaphors and two are involved in the cause and effect nature of life.

Living Sacrifice – to be a living sacrifice means daily giving of oneself to others or to Another in order to meet needs and wants that are not our own.

Exemplar of Maturity – this simply means to be a model of Adult maturity; that is consistently responsible, reasonable, rational, reliable, and logical. Consistency is the key.

Cause and Effect: “Preparation for Opportunity”

We fail because we do not recognise or respond well to opportunity. This is the point of wisdom; we are getting close to wisdom as an outcome--the pointy end. Wisdom is all about preparation for the key opportunities, every opportunity in fact. All of the above descriptors are about preparation for opportunity.

This ‘wheel’ is a neat (albeit, not all-encompassing) paradigm for approaching wisdom.

Copyright © 2008, S. J. Wickham. All Rights Reserved Worldwide.