Discovering Wisdom

I was reading for the second time a really nice book I first read two years ago called "The happiness hypothesis (written by Jonathan Haidt, a really cool and fresh psycologist!)". It was a gift my friend and photographer Lawrence Impey gave to me during he's visit to Bogotá http://www.flickr.com/photos/lawrenceimpey/. It´s strange, as it was the first time I saw him at my country. We met on an airplane flying from New York to London, the day I first crossed the Atlantic ocean to see the supposedly "first world". The first British person I ever met (that was not one of my school teachers) was sitting beside me, and said some thing like "its amazing to see Manhattan from this point of view, beautiful for a picture". From that day on we became really good friends. I made him promise that if I ever got married he would be my photographer,
which in fact became true 6 years after! He came from London to Galicia and was the official photographer at my wedding, nothing better then a photographer that has known your good and dark sides! All this introduction is just to point out this paragraph from the book I really liked, and made me think about the people that are capable of not thinking just BLACK AND WHITE. And it reminded me of Lawrence; so here it is:

"Wisdom, says Sternberg, is the tacit knowledge that lets a person balance two sets of things. First, wise people are able to balance their own needs, the needs of others, and the needs of people or things beyond the immediate interaction (e.g., institutions, the environment, or people who may be adversely affected later on). Ignorant people see everything in black and white- they rely heavily on the myth of pure evil- and they are strongly influenced by their own self-interest. The wise are able to see things from others' point of view, appreciate shades of gray, and then choose or advise a course of action that works out the best for everyone in the long run. Second, wise people are able to balance three responses to situations: adaptation (changing the self to fit the environment), shaping (changing the environment) and selection(choosing to move to a new environment.) "

I hope I, as a human being, can become wise one day. The first thing is to stop thinking black and white! Ill start with grays and shades!

Read this book! I have learned so many things about philosophers, psychologists! POSITIVE PSYCHOLOGY, but best of all! Things about me! Here are some of Lawrence Impeys' pictures!