The end of year up here in the Northern Hemisphere is dark. December 21st is literally the pits. This invites a brief reflection on living in the dark, and its remedy of stepping into the light.
Perhaps because of the December darkness, lights are top-of-mind. There is plenty of physical evidence that Americans are seasonally light-obsessed. How many lights can we put on a tree? How about your neighbor’s illuminated yard inflatables? University of Virginia celebrates the Lighting of the Lawn. Charlottesville’s Boars Head Inn offers the Winter Wander, an illuminated walk with an evening drone show. In New York City, there is the lighting of the Rockefeller Center Christmas tree and the windows in Saks Fifth Avenue. Lights draw us in; a fact not lost on retailers. And as satellite images of North America at night reveal, the U.S. lights up the dark.
But it is also useful to consider light in a different sense, illumination or enlightenment. What have you learned this year? It’s an awkward question, because at this time of year, one just wants to have fun. But work with me here for a moment. If you are a student, you have probably focused on your growth in knowledge. For instance, facts, formulas, tools, names, dates in history, etc. If you are in the early-to-mid stage of a career, you have focused on building skills and proving your competence. This could include how to sell a product, organize a team, or give feedback to an employee in a way that actually builds her or him up. Universities know all about your hunger to gain knowledge and skills, and tailor university courses accordingly.
But there is a third dimension, growth in wisdom. Outside of philosophy departments and courses in the humanities, university professors tend to find the subject of wisdom a bit awkward. How do you fit wisdom into a course on bookkeeping, organic chemistry, computer coding, or zoology? Anyway, a professor might say, the subject of wisdom is amorphous, hard to pin down.
Yet there is no shortage of guidance about wisdom. Aristotle said virtue (wisdom) is the foundation for human flourishing (the good life.) The good life is the virtuous life. Living the good life requires knowing about the character traits necessary to practice virtue.
In addition, many faith traditions have offered guidance on wisdom and living a virtuous life. Important religious holidays tend to emphasize lights and dawning in the sense of growth of insight, revelation, awakening, transformation, and enlightenment.[1]
I argue that of the three kinds of light (knowledge, skills, and wisdom), growth in wisdom is paramount. The lore of all fields of endeavor (e.g. business, law, politics, medicine, the military, etc.) is littered with spectacular failures owing the bad choices, bad behavior, and bad values, rather than bad knowledge or skills.
So, where can you turn to gain wisdom?
- Enlightenment at the level of society? History is not reassuring.[2] The Western Enlightenment of the late 18th century produced two revolutions (American and French) that proved pivotal in world history. The French Revolution led to the Reign of Terror and the rise of an absolute ruler (Napoleon). The American Revolution was no walk in the park, and as the new Ken Burns video series shows, led to continued political instability for years. Mass “enlightenment” is tricky to say the least.
- Growth in wisdom as a solitary endeavor is also challenging. In the press of careers and personal obligations, it is easy to go on autopilot: check the boxes, complete the routines, fulfill the expectations, wrangle the relations, all of which is numbing. The problem with autopilot is that one listens poorly; one cares indifferently; one participates without being present; one affirms values without actually living by them. Autopilot is a form of drifting that makes one vulnerable to all kinds of ills–especially in this season–such as pointless consumption, credit card abuse, indigestion, hangovers, lost tempers, and burnout. By January, the person on autopilot returns to work to escape from the end-of-year demands.
- Talk with others. At Darden we see that discussion with others in small groups or in class is a good means of challenging students to question their own choices, probe their own values, and consider the consequences they impose on others. Walter Wriston, former CEO of Citibank, said, “Good judgment comes from experience. And experience comes from bad judgment.” Talking with others is a relatively low-risk way to gain “experience” and to grow in wisdom.
Where to begin? The first step is fearless self-examination. How are you growing? What have you learned? What have you been reading? How have you been spending your time? What is going well? What isn’t? What will you do about the latter? What help do you need? How can you get it? How have you changed? Where do you need to wake up in your life?
At this season, an iconic example of self-examination that resulted in personal transformation is Ebeneezer Scrooge, the main character in Charles Dickens’s A Christmas Carol. Some frightening insights and fearless self-examinations during a bad night’s sleep lead to Scrooge’s transformation. The story concludes,
Scrooge was better than his word. He did it all, and infinitely more; and to Tiny Tim, who did not die, he was a second father. He became as good a friend, as good a master, and as good a man, as the good old city knew, or any other good old city, town, or borough, in the good old world. Some people laughed to see the alteration in him, but he let them laugh, and little heeded them; for he was wise enough to know that nothing ever happened on this globe, for good, at which some people did not have their fill of laughter in the outset; and knowing that such as these would be blind anyway, he thought it quite as well that they should wrinkle up their eyes in grins, as have the malady in less attractive forms. His own heart laughed: and that was quite enough for him.
He had no further intercourse with Spirits, but lived upon the Total Abstinence Principle, ever afterwards; and it was always said of him, that he knew how to keep Christmas well, if any man alive possessed the knowledge. May that be truly said of us, and all of us! And so, as Tiny Tim observed, God bless Us, Every One![3]
[1] For example,
- Judaism: Festival of the lights; Hannukah, December
- Christianity: advent, dawning. Christmas, December
- Hindu, Sikh, Jain diaspora: Diwali = festival of lights over darkness, good over evil, and knowledge over ignorance. (Oct-Nov.)
- Islam: Hijrah, a celebration of light (June/July). Festivals of light: Ramadan (March) and Eid (May).
[2] See an especially good book, critical of the Enlightenment, Jonathan I. Israel’s, The Enlightenment That Failed: Ideas, Revolution, and Democratic Defeat, 1748-1830. (Oxford University Press, 2019). Also, Thomas Carlyle’s The French Revolution presents a sobering assessment.
[3] Charles Dickens, A Christmas Carol, Project Gutenberg. https://www.gutenberg.org/files/46/46-h/46-h.htm.