It seems any day can be a “throwback day” if we label it that way. Here on “Throwback Monday” is something that flowed through me a few years ago:

“A Pause Precedes Wisdom” – Grasshopper

There is a difference between knowledge and wisdom and when you discover the difference, you’ll pause more often.

One of the hardest lessons to learn is that wisdom comes through you, not from you.

When we precipitously spout out our answers to life’s questions, we may have our facts lined up, but there’s no room for our wisdom, unless we pause.

That prefabricated information is coming from us. That type of information can be Googled or looked up in a library. Wisdom comes through you.

In order for that to happen, you have to pause what you know in order for wisdom to flow.

There is a need for pat answers, but when we use them for every question, life becomes stale and so do we.

Wisdom isn’t arrived at logically. Wisdom comes from a different place than facts and figures. I like to imagine wisdom sitting in a creative cauldron below the surface. In order for it to bubble to the top of our mind, we have to make room for it. That space we are making for it is called silence.

It’s necessary for us to pause our pat answers to make a silent space for wisdom to enter. When we pause our instant reactions, there is a moment of silence. It’s in that moment that creativity fills the void and wisdom can flow through us.

How many of our answers do we automatically push out without pausing to consider what else is available? – Almost all of them, until we learn to pause and be silent.

Acting is the delivery of rehearsed lines; spontaneous life comes from the unrehearsed response to any reality that’s presented.

That organic reply is what gives fullness to our lives.

“Pause it and they will come,” – Answers, that is.

Prefabricated retorts have all the polish of a slickly packaged political candidate. When’s the last time you heard any wisdom in one of their orchestrated sound bites?

We are no different. Our “stump speech” is attracting less and less listeners each time we forget to pause.

The people I learn the least from are those who won’t let me breathe. They talk seemingly without pause and don’t give me time to process what they are saying. They may have valuable information but I have to work too hard to glean any wisdom from it when it comes without pause.

We, and those around us, learn more when we make space for wisdom to flow through us.

If you’ve grown tired of hearing the same answers, glean some wisdom from a wise old advertising slogan from Coca-Cola – “It’s the pause that refreshes.”

All the best,

John