The Emergence of Wisdom

Yesterday, I had three customer service experiences. I had to get my cell phone number updated at my local bank. I called a customer service number and I spoke to a representative who may have admittedly Ben having computer trouble, but honestly sounded like she didn’t know what the hell she was talking about. She had advised me to go into the bank, which I did.

The teller who was initially helping me at the bank did seem like he was in a little bit over his head with my problem; so he escalated the problem up to his branch manager. Now in this kids defense, even the branch manager had to call technical support for assistance with getting my phone number updated.

Finally, the branch manager, probably the most professional than the three people who helped me yesterday. Take care of my problem and was very laid-back about it. I’ll bring all this up right now because I’m not really sure what happened yesterday. The way I see it, it was one of three scenarios:

I just happened to have a unique problem that truly baffled a couple of the subordinate employees;
the subordinates in fact very unprofessional, unqualified, and did not know what they were doing.
I’ve had a point in my life and in my experience where I am a more professional, I am better at talking to people and I am experienced enough see when someone else doesn’t know what they’re doing

Could it possibly be all of the above?

Knowledge in the workplace

I’ll give another example. When I was teaching during the Covid lockdowns, my school district decided to use Microsoft teams as our online instructional portal. In my current school, my principal has started adopting teams more recently for virtual meetings, virtual conferences, and as a place to share files and information among the staff.

Evidently, and without any formal training, I seem to be one of the people in my building who is considered “somebody who knows what they’re doing“ with teams. My principal is even mentioned me in a few other teachers by name and an email as go to people with Teams related questions.

Throughout my life, I think I’ve been humble almost to a fault. I’ve never been to really seek attention and I must get a little bit, embarrassed by it. This is especially ironic, considering the fact that I am a school teacher, so I literally stand up in front of my students every day and talk. But me being seen as some sort of authority, or expert on a particular subject is kind of new.

I know that it’s almost universally accepted that with comes experience and for those of us who were lucky enough, wisdom. Am I experienced? Am I wise?

If this is true, then it happened one day without me knowing it. I remember back to some of my early years in English classes in college hearing some of the upperclassman talk, spotting out references to other classical works they’ve read and thinking to myself “I wanna be that guy one day“. About three years later, it occurred me one day during a class in my senior year that I had become that guy. I was the guy who was suddenly comparing whatever book we were reading in class to another book that I had read previously. I had become the English lit dude without ever even realizing it.

I guess that’s how it’s supposed to happened. We don’t wake up one day, with all of this wisdom just magically bestowed upon us. We just come over the course of time, come to the realization that we know things.

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The article “The Emergence of Wisdom” first appeared on Rebuilding Rob.

One response to “The Emergence of Wisdom”

sambucadarling

November 4, 2025

Some people need to get their sign on.

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