Be The Plus

I believe that education is the biggest force for positive change that we have. I am a huge supporter of education.

By most measures, my own education was a success. I came out of it with good grades at GCSE, straight A’s at A Level and a First Class Honours from a Russell Group University. I walked straight into the job that my Careers Advisor at school told me that I should want. I was the kind of gullible kid who thought, “When the Careers Advisor tells you what career to do, that’s what you do”.

Fast-forward two-and-a-half years of that ‘perfect’ job and I felt completely drained, joyless and unfulfilled. I wanted a complete change.

I didn’t understand it at the time, but my own education had left me completely lacking the ability to find happiness in everyday life, to recharge my energy when I felt drained or to stay positive when I was surrounded by negativity.

I set out to find what I was lacking and to fill that gap.

My own education gave me so much, and I had had some amazing teachers, but I was completely lacking in wisdom. Gradually, little by little, I started uncovering some amazing little gems of wisdom that turned on lightbulbs in my head and empowered me to achieve what really mattered to me.

You’re probably a young person who is amazing in so many ways, but there are still things to learn and wisdom is completely neglected in education. Hopefully you have had some great teachers who get that and sneak in some little bits of wisdom here and there, even though they’re meant to be telling you about photosynthesis or trigonometry or whether the wives were divorced or beheaded. However, what should be the most important thing in education is at best left to chance or at worst missing from it entirely.

So what is wisdom?  I asked some amazing young people this recently and a really helpful answer that one of them gave me was ‘Knowledge is knowing a tomato is a fruit, but wisdom is not putting it in a fruit salad’.

I said it was really helpful, but in my opinion, it is completely wrong! To me, being able to apply your knowledge like that is intelligence, not wisdom. To me, wisdom is something else.

Wisdom is something subtler, finer, more powerful, much more amazing, much more useful in knowing how to navigate through life skilfully.

To me, wisdom is the skill you need to make your mind work for you, rather than you working for it. Wisdom is being able to see the transcendental in mundane everyday life. Wisdom is the ability you need to be truly, deeply, authentically happy.

I would amend the earlier quote to: ‘Knowledge is knowing a tomato is a fruit; intelligence is not putting it in a fruit salad; wisdom is the ability to remain serene even if you have to eat a fruit salad with tomatoes in it.’

Most of our problems in life come from wanting life to be different to how it currently is. Wisdom gives us happiness even though things are far from perfect. Wisdom helps us to see the transcendental in mundane everyday life. Wisdom gives us the grace to cherish life just as it is.

I don’t claim to be wise, but I do sincerely claim to love wisdom wholeheartedly; I deeply cherish it. I believe there is nothing in this world more valuable than it.

However, on the face of it, the world does not seem to value wisdom. I want to change that. That’s why Be The Plus exists – to celebrate wisdom and to share it with the world.

I hope that, in doing so, I can add a little more happiness to your daily life.

Only love.