Every day, new bits of knowledge come avalanching towards us in tiny increments like grains of sand piled on top of another.
But while they may not feel overwhelming on a daily basis, those mental dunes can pile up awfully fast. And if we are not vigilant about metabolizing those grains into something more meaningful, our minds will suffocate.
Cognitive researchers who study the deluge of information that bombs the human brain report that every day, people are inundated with the equivalent amount of over thirty gigabytes of information.
That’s a sufficient quantity to overload a laptop within a week.
But this is not a new problem. It’s not the fault of technology, although it has exacerbated the issue.
Hindu scriptures warned us about information overload two millennia ago:
Undigested knowledge weighs down on us like bars of gold on a mule’s back, and that knowledge remains useless to us until we digest it and make it our own through assimilation and reflection.
And so, all this knowledge is merely a commodity. It’s fuel. A cognitive carbohydrate that energizes and enables us to make decisions and take action and have experiences, during which we earn higher order gifts such as wisdom, perspective, insight, judgment and vision.
Unlike knowledge, these gems live inside our muscles and bones. Which is why they’re so valuable to our lives and the lives of those we encounter.
The question, then, is not whether we have downloaded all the books, but whether we have useful crucibles in which to develop our wisdom. Whether we are willing to create a conscious system for translating the cacophony into a coherent melody.
If so, then we can melt those millions of tiny grains of sand into magnificent sculptures of glass, that we can either give as gifts to those we love, or sell for big bucks to those we work with.
LET ME ASK YA THIS…
Will you enter the castle of wisdom that lies hidden in fertile darkness just behind the eyelids, or watch more television?
* * * *
Scott Ginsberg
That Guy with the Nametag
Author. Speaker. Strategist. Inventor. Filmmaker. Publisher. Songwriter.
It’s the world’s first, best and only product development and innovation gameshow!
Tune in and subscribe for a little execution in public.
Join our community of innovators, artists and entrepreneurs
Subscribe
Daily updates straight to your inbox.
Bio
