Photo: © D. Paul Graham, New York Public Library, circa 2019

“Monday 5 Things”™ ….. Prudentia Doctus …..

The world watched last week as some of the most educated revealed how little wisdom they actually have. I’ll keep out of the political ring here, but your humble scribe is of the mindset that that books and school can’t teach us everything in life. Don’t get me wrong; I have been truly blessed, thankful, honored and privileged to have had some amazing teachers in my life. There are just some things in life that only time, age, success, failure, and a sense of integrity and honesty will teach us. Today’s M5T takes a look at wisdom, prudence, and life lessons that are only taught and discovered outside the hallowed halls of “higher” education.

1. Heart

Having a heart can mean many things. It can be the ability and emotional maturity to show compassion and kindness for others. Having a heart is learning to be merciful and gracious. Finding the strength to dig deeper when you have no energy to keep moving to the finish line. Keeping the intensity to win, the fortitude to persevere. It can be finding your own will and your true nature. It’s talking the truth when others are fearful to speak up. It’s taking positivity over negativity; finding self-esteem, courage, and confidence in who you are and what you are doing.

2. Vision

Vision develops over time. It’s clarity of purpose, allowing you the freedom to pursue your dreams and achieve goals and objectives. It creates the framework for your plans and decisions, and gives you focus to overcome obstacles along the way. It can be your inspiration, remove self-imposed limits, and be a means to calculate and mitigate risk. Your vision can define who you are, where you want to be, and can transform your dreams into reality.

3. Action

Action is so much more than being busy. It is moving forward with single minded tenacity. Actions always have a means to an end. It is resolutely pushing through pressure and crisis. It is applying lessons learned from failures and life changing events. Proper action is knowing the difference between fundamental issues needed to achieve your goals and being busy for the sake of looking busy. It means learning to say no to others. Action is stepping up for those that can’t. It requires an unyielding and disciplined conviction to achieve. Action requires planning and setting time aside for important issues that are key to your vision and dreams. It is smart repetition of the things that work, dogged determination to ignore the clutter and noise of others telling you what you should do, and an obstinate desire to figure things out.

4. Sense

Time reveals that common sense is not all that common, perhaps never more evident than today. Developing your personal sense of what and who is around you is a learned skill. Learning about people; what motivates them, what excites them, what angers them and what pleases them is a skill that only comes from experience. Taking risks to trust and to interact takes time. Relying on your ‘gut’ with first impressions; making decisions; having a baseline of situational experience and watching for deviations and inconsistencies is foundational to reliance and acting on the inner voice of your senses.

5. Travel

You can read about other countries and culture; and you can meet with their people, but the lessons learned from them can only be achieved by going. Experience and wisdom learned from travel is simply priceless. Your horizons are broadened when you travel with an open mind and acceptance of new ideas, places, smells, tastes, traditions, and languages. Travel enhances your tolerance. It increases your confidence, teaches self-awareness, and takes you outside your personal comfort zone. Travel educates by the diversity of other cultures and the world. Travel refreshes, challenges, teaches, and builds memories that will never fade. It is the gift of changed perspective; through places and situations that you may never have imagined.

Here’s to a week of focusing on life lessons that garner wisdom, prudence, and veritas.

© 2023 D. Paul Graham, all rights reserved.

M5T is now on South Magazine Digital ..… Read it here …..

For over 12 years, D. Paul Graham has published “Monday 5 Things” ™, also known to readers as M5T.

You can reach Paul by email at dpg@imagegraham.com