Word to the Wise

Sometime I wish I could say something wise in this blog. They say the older we are, the wiser we become. But I'm neither wise nor old [grin]. But I know this: The longer we live in this world, the more people we’ve met, thus the more human interaction we've dealt with. With any luck, perhaps that'll make us, wiser. And as long as we live, we will carry this library within our memory, some names even we still may fondly call as a friend. I say, this is one of the true richness in one lifetime. Once I read that you don't really die until everyone that you knew is dead, too.

In my old school days, I met random school mates, also the teachers. In my undergraduates’ years, I met various colleagues, not only from the cerebral-academic-serious type, but also the deviant-rebellion type, though they are few and far between. Then in my working environment I get to met a young funky group of people, the 'yuppies', with their metropolitan life styles. And during my master years I get to learn with an interesting cast of characters, from various backgrounds. Now, in these days of age, I'm mostly surrounded by sedated, older, family type of person.

Of course there is always an exception, because as once said to me 'each and every individual is unique, treat as such', but perhaps it is within my nature to always try to categorized things. The more I met with people, the more I get the feeling of déjà vu. I said 'Hey this A guy is just another version of B I've met years ago.' While not always work, or sometime proved to be wrong, this analogy saves me a lot of time for 'get-to-know' process. Past experience can teach us of how you can handle the character situation more.. may I say, wiser. But just as I said earlier, there's always be an outlier, a unique type of individual that you get to met just once in your lifetime, that will never ever be fitted in any pigeonhole you've created.

Obviously, this observation is not just of my own musing. The old Four Humour idea define four basic classification of character (phlegmatic, sanguine, choleric and melancholic), ancient Enneagram introduce the concept of nine type of people (reformer, helper, achiever, individualist, investigator, loyalist, enthusiast, challenger, peacemaker), while from Jung, Myers-Briggs theoritize about sixteen type of people (from ISTJ to ENFP), even Neil Gaiman come up with his own Seven of Endless (Destiny, Death, Dream, Destruction, Desire, Despair, and Delirium).
[ Gawd, I can go on here, but this is beginning to sound like a psychology journal ]

The truth is, it is somewhat sad to be reduced into stereotypical type of a characters, to be pigeonhole as a mere two sentences paragraph, when in reality there's always two side in every coin. That's there are whole lot of sides inside every individual. Sadly, that's how most of the society work, with their own set of prejudices. Maybe this is not a wise thing to do after all. And definitely not a wise thing to blog about.. For real wisdom, go elsewhere.