Wisdom comes from real living Yvonne Wennerlid
Wisdom is a subject I’m passionate about and love to reflect on and apply in my life.
Being wise is more important to me than being smart and getting top grades in the subjects taught in school. A high IQ is impressive, and when I recently read about a man who had an IQ of around 200, I raised my eyebrows and wondered what that must feel like. I’ve never taken a test to see my score, and it’s not something I plan to do either.
Because what does it mean to be wise and to live with wisdom? For me, a lot of it comes from my dad, who was the wisest person I’ve ever met. Unfortunately, he passed away in the summer of 2025 after a long battle with an incurable heart condition. He leaves behind an enormous void, and he took a piece of my heart with him—which I am happy he did, because our relationship was wonderful. No matter what, I could always call Dad to talk about anything that might come up.
He was always ready to listen and took a keen interest in everything I thought about, pondered, experienced, felt, and went through—all of which I shared with him. He was my greatest source of comfort and my anchor in everyday life whenever something was confusing, difficult, overwhelming, or simply fun to share. I knew that Dad would listen and share his thoughts.
My mom was also a wonderful woman who possessed a different kind of wisdom gained from life. Unfortunately, that wisdom slipped away from her—and from us—when she was diagnosed with dementia, and nothing was ever the same again. Now it was her children who had to take care of her. Nothing was normal anymore. Mom also passed away in the summer of 2025, just seven weeks before Dad. It was tough, difficult, and painful. Mom took a piece of my heart, too—and I was happy to let her.
Wisdom, presence, communication, and taking action are my guiding principles, and that’s exactly what has shaped my life. Life has certainly been like an amusement park with all kinds of attractions—excitement, nail-biting moments, laughter, fear, anxiety, fascination, and every other conceivable emotion that life has to offer. Next, I’d like to delve a little deeper into these aspects.
Let’s start with wisdom which I love so much. We can think of it as the umbrella term that encompasses street smart and book smart. To me, street smart means taking action, thinking logically, and seeing what we can do about anything that stands in our way. But is it really an obstacle, or does it give us the chance to rethink, reflect, understand possible solutions, or shift our focus? Actually, it’s all of those things at once.
Book smart speaks for itself, and I love books. They’re lined up on the bookshelves in our home, and I love immersing myself in them to see how I change, what emerges when I engage with them.
Number two, then, is presence—which is one of the finest and most important things we can give ourselves and others. Focus and interest in what is being shared. Fully in the moment.
True presence—where we actively participate in conversations, stories, travels, books, workouts, cooking, and parties. Unfortunately, there’s so much stress and hustle in life that steals our focus, time, energy, and capacity. The excuses and flimsy justifications for why we don’t remember what’s been said and repeated make us feel less important.
Communication is such an important of life. It begins within us and continues in how we talk to others. All five of our senses are involved in communication—not just the words we exchange. Our eyes communicate more than we realize, as does an honest smile. Our sense of hearing, of course, prepares us to take in what is shared with us. Taste is about being able to tell someone what we like and don’t like. The fourth sense is smell, and it tells us a lot that we don’t always think about. Smell is the last sense to fade from memory. I want to expand the concept of touch to include understanding people, not just what the skin feels.
The fourth important aspect for me is taking action. What happens when I look at a piano and don’t touch it? Nothing. If I stare myself crazy waiting for the stove to get hot, but it doesn’t, because I don’t turn it on. Taking action is something we were born with. Today, the focus is on performing for the sake of principle and chasing titles, bonuses, or the like. For me, it’s routines and habits based on what we can do and accomplish.
These four elements come together to create something truly wonderful; in my view, life doesn’t feel quite as joyful and colourful if I were to remove even one of them. Life is built upon various building blocks. Life bestows wisdom upon us freely when we communicate with genuine presence and engage fully in the conversation, and the other person senses that presence.
So why is it, then, that so many people fall short in one or more of these areas? The answers are as numerous—and even more so—than the number of people we could ask this question to. The answer I would have given you today wouldn’t have been the same as it was a year ago, when the loss and grief over my parents were so fresh and so intensely palpable that it ached in both body and soul. Today it’s different, and that change has come through wisdom and many wonderful conversations with my sister, during which we’ve been able to share all our thoughts. We’re here for each other because we had the same mom and dad. No one can understand it as well as my sister does—and yet we’ve both experienced this in different ways.
Dad loved watching documentaries, crime shows where he could figure out who the murderer was on his own, solving Sudoku puzzles and crossword puzzles, reading history magazines, learning about archaeology, and reading every book he could get his hands on. On top of that, he had a large garden that he loved—and where my sister, our children, and I, in turn, could play and have fun. Thanks to the natural setting of a large yard, Dad had to be hands-on, fixing things and thinking logically. What a blessing for him, his children, and his grandchildren. Dancing, nature, cars and health were also important.
Mom was wise in getting to know people, asking questions, showing genuine interest, and sharing the parts of her life that had been both challenging and wonderful. Both of my parents always listened to what we had to say, and the grandchildren received all the attention they could possibly get. From the moment they woke up until we went to bed at night, they devoted every waking second to us, and that was one of the most wonderful things that could happen. Mum was always so present. All the time.
These are the very things I want to share and spread as a ripple effect to see how far we can go by starting to reflect on how we spend our days. Because every day is new, and we’re never the same person when we go to bed as we are when we wake up—or when we go to bed again that evening. We change whether we notice it or not. That’s life, and it’s wisdom to understand that—that nothing is completely permanent or constant. All matter changes over time, just as we humans do.