By nature of being a student, the pursuit of knowledge is a necessary aspect of daily life. There is a baseline level of facts that one must obtain in order to pass exams and satisfy the implied logic that said facts will serve as a helpful tool within the profession of natural medicine.

While knowledge is both necessary and good, its unaccompanied value faces significant limits. This is easily illustrated by the fact that there are doctors with high degrees of knowledge who do not have superior outcomes, or levels of satisfaction, among their patients.

Wisdom, on the other hand, is different. King Solomon of Israel had all the riches of his time, as well as complete knowledge of the law at his disposal. And when he was presented with the opportunity to have anything he wanted, what did he ask for? He asked for wisdom.

His asking for wisdom demonstrates that while wisdom is certainly not less than knowledge, it is far more. Wisdom is for the circumstances of life when rote knowledge and moral rules aren’t enough to ascertain the best way forward. It is for the times when we face forks in the road and both options are lawful, and neither option negates logic or knowledge. To where do we turn then? We turn to wisdom.

If this is the case, cultivating wisdom should be a top pursuit, and I believe there is an inherent yearning for wisdom written on every heart. Unfortunately, the culture in which most of us  ̶  certainly myself  ̶ conduct our daily lives is not one that values wisdom to the degree it arguably should. It begets the question how does one cultivate wisdom?

It is a question to which there is no mechanical answer. Wisdom by its very nature is not a binary label, but a path that must be walked daily. There is, however, a book that offers instruction in the subject and the first step is attuning one’s heart to awe and wonder.

Each of us, therefore, can look inward and ask ourselves if we are appropriately attuned to the wonder around us – if we are continually grateful and humbled before the mighty source of everything. I certainly am not. And as life gets more congested, I find it becomes increasingly more necessary to recalibrate. In the end, exams come and go, but it is the posture of the heart that determines one’s course.

Find out more about NUHS’ naturopathic medicine program here.