Wise

What does it mean to be wise?

People will often use "wise" as a compliment, and therefore it makes sense that people like to be called wise, and will pursue that, but what does it actually mean, in one's day-to-day life, to be wise?

As much as I know that I shouldn't, I worry about being a fool. But it occurred to me today that I didn't know what it meant to be a fool, either, outside of being called one. And I keep trying to train myself to not worry about the labels that other people chose for me, because, in the end, I have no control over them. If someone wishes to call me a fool, then they will, and if other people wish to agree with that assessment, that choice is theirs, not mine.

But, of course, detaching one's emotions from the world around one is easier said than done, and there is a reason for that. The process of human evolution is not infallible, but natural selection advances those traits that result in people living longer, and presumably better, lives. The flash of anxiety that I receive when I feel that I have to defend my worth as a person in some way or another exists, because, for the most part, nothing demonstrably better has come along. At least, nothing that our genetic code has seen fit to pick up on.

And so I often find myself wondering: Is it really better to try and work my way past it? Is it really better to attempt to free myself from the worry about things that I understand that I can't control? Or is this the path that has simply lead everyone who has taken it before me to destruction.