I wish gaining knowledge didn’t require so much effort!
When I was in Belfast Northern Ireland I saw a sculpture called the Salmon of Knowledge that celebrates the return of fish to Belfast’s River Lagan (created by John Kindness and installed back in 1999).
The legend goes that a salmon eats some hazelnuts that had fallen into the Well of Wisdom. After devouring the nuts, the salmon gained all the knowledge in the world. According to the tale, the first person to eat the fish would then inherit all of its knowledge.
If only it were THAT easy… instead gaining knowledge requires study, observation, and learning.
The key is to learn something new every day – it doesn’t have to be monumental, one new thing – today you can even use the legend of the Salmon of Knowledge if you’d not heard it before. Plus figuring out how to apply what you’ve learned… perhaps, in my case, figuring out how to use it in a blog post about leadership.
Don’t stop there! Here are Merriam-Webster’s definitions that explain why you need to go beyond knowledge:
- information: obtained from investigation, study, or instruction
- knowledge: the fact or condition of knowing something with familiarity gained through experience or association
- wisdom: ability to discern inner qualities and relationships
Once you learn the information, translate it into knowledge, to really make the best use of whatever it is…. you need to translate it into new insights that will give you the wisdom to use what you’ve learned.
Of course it would be so much easier if we could have that salmon of wisdom for dinner.