They say that wisdom comes from experience. Even someone who studied a lot, like Einstein, said, "The only source of knowledge is experience. You need experience to gain wisdom."
So, how come I know people who've been through many experiences, yet it doesn't look like they got any wiser?
The truth is that experience alone doesn't teach anything to those who are not open to learning. Or better, as the philosopher Aldous Huxley said, "Experience is not what happens to a man; it is what a man does with what happens to him."
Huxley reminds me that we need attention and intention to transform what happens to us and around us into experience. And then we need courage and openness to transform that experience into wisdom.
At any moment, something is happening around us and to us. But we register and process only what we pay attention to. And because our attention follows our intention, we must go through life with the intent to learn and grow. Once we become aware of what is happening around and to us, we must be open to seeing the learning and have the courage to challenge what we already know.
Somehow, wisdom begins with a choice.
“Between the stimulus and response, there is a space. And in that space lies our freedom and power to choose our responses. In our response lies our growth and our freedom” — Viktor Frankl