“Don’t be overwise; fling yourself straight into life, without deliberation; don’t be afraid - the flood will bear you to the bank and set you safe on your feet again.” — Dostoevsky
“Overwise.” What a good word. I’ll understand it as having excessive knowledge about living while lacking the embodied wisdom from the lessons of doing things, making mistakes, and proactively being foolish.
An adjacent phrase: “underlived,” which I’ve seen defined as “to live in an overcautious or unfulfilling manner.” While the underlived are not always overwise, the overwise are always underlived. The lived do not have time for the excessive thinking that leads to overwisdom.
Schoolification of reality and safety culture are candidates for today’s overwisdom and underliving. The former promotes the notion that there is a correct answer to everything, and the latter avoids all risks in favor of always staying safe...
Don’t get hurt, don’t risk hurting others, don’t tell the truth, don’t fail, don’t do that thing you’re called to do, don’t even try, don’t die, hide inside, because it’s too scary outside.
Once the pain of being underlived becomes too punishing, one becomes ready to test their overwisdom against reality, to break it, recreate it, and make a life from it. Countervailing values are needed to push back against the experts of life and their safety-peddling ways, who want our world to be predictable, controllable, and hellishly comfortable.
Safety means being free from danger; without danger, there is no adventure, and without adventure, there is no living, only underliving. Fortunately, adventure is in our blood. Adventure is what makes us human. The womb world is not interesting. It’s boring, too dull. There is more to see—unknowable things, expansive beyond approved imagination.
Shed the attachment to overwisdom and the shame of underliving; you’ve been held back for far too long. Adventure is always near for those who reach out and grab it.
