Last week reminded me rather starkly that wisdom and information are often very different things, and that one invites greater openness while the other could use some well-placed blinders strapped on.
See, first there was the movie iteration of The Call of the Wild. It’s light and sweet and charming and packed with wisdom.
There are insights in there on effective leadership versus tyrannical power-grabbing masquerading as leadership.
There’s a bit about ego getting in the way of thoughtful consideration, and then getting back out of the way.
There’s a whole bunch about what it means to authentic and instinctive and courageous while continuing to honor the web of interconnectivity in which we all live.
And all of it through the lens of a rather goofy, not particularly masterfully-rendered CGI dog named Buck in a somewhat ham-fisted storyline.
On the information front – and, really, I mean the misinformation front, is COVID-19, aka the coronavirus. To say that the true crisis on that one is the abundance of reactivity being gobbled up like vitamin C pills is not, I don’t think, an overstatement.
I get it: Disease is scary and people are, in fact, dying.
And last week, the Dow Jones took a nasty dive and people are afraid to eat at Chinese restaurants and drink Cornoa brand beer and there are increasing reports of people being ugly to neighbors of East Asian descent and all of that? That’s reactivity, that’s humans not slowing down enough to sort the information from the misinformation, and to tap into wisdom.
Then again, is there actually thoughtless backlash dipping Corona sales? Probably not.
This is exactly what got me sitting at my desk, thoughtful about our common resistance to a wide array of sources of wisdom and our willingness to accept all sorts of dubious forms of information.
See, I wouldn’t have gone to The Call of the Wild if it wasn’t for Theresa who loves a sappy, heartwarmer of a movie just as much as she loves watching The Walking Dead in a loop. There’s a shadow of my Cool = Disdainful teenager left in me who resists having her cockles warmed unless it’s by an edgy and dark coming-of-age story (or, okay, video of a returning vet reuniting with a family dog – gets me every time).
Without Theresa, I would have cut myself off from all of the juicy and wise metaphors we experienced The Call of the Wild.
Alternately, I heard the Corona beer stat on Wait Wait Don’t Tell Me – a comedic current events quiz show – and believed it hook, line and sinker. Yes, it’s an NPR show but, good golly, the point of it is entertainment, not education.
While it behooves me to open myself to wisdom in whatever clothing it chooses to appear, it would be even more beneficial to be far more discerning in vetting where I get information, transferring my skepticism from Lifetime to online, so to speak.
And, in this case, when I say me, I really mean us. In this instance, I think I’m part of the rule, not the exception.
Where do you find wisdom and information? In this week’s email to The Bigger Badder Crew, I share some more possibly-unexpected realms that inform my perspective and approach to coaching, and one hum-dinger of an informative article. You can join the crew here. Or you can take a bigger leap by taking me up on a coaching collaboration that puts all of what I’ve gathered to work in creating your bigger, badder life. More on that opportunity here.