We cannot rediscover what we do not know. And this is the paradox in learning from “received wisdom”. Its reception is often within fields of knowledge foreign to us. The wisdom may be common enough to practitioners in the field, but to others? It is as if it never existed.

Surprise or mentorship may bring us into contact with this treasure. Similarly, within fields of learning with which we are already familiar, but within which our focus may be in other areas— directed to other subspecialties—- we are sometimes thrilled by the shock of recognition. Then, coming across an idea we’d read before, suddenly re-contextualiized because of our own needs or maturation, “poof”: we are dazzled by the elegance and beauty of an idea, an old and potentially knowable idea from long before, suddenly grasped through its congruence with some current idea or notion, noodling about in our thinking.

This is the joy of receiving wisdom. It is compounded of receptivity and provision. Receptivity, or openness, comes from us. Provision, of course, is external: but always available. It is, as philosophers, say, “thrown”, a given in one form or the other, for the taking.

Here’s an example of such a moment. It occurred for me during the second week of January in 2009, and was mediated by a talk given in 1978, which I was reading in connection with preparation for a course I was teaching. The 1978 talk led me back to an idea published in an economics journal paper in 1951.

The effect? My dear friend “A” (the next person I saw after this moment) was bushwhacked as I greeted her with a gushing description of the link between my thinking, circa 2009 and an idea in behavioral economics, circa 1951— even before I’d greeted her hello!

The mediator of this particular nugget, Nobel Laureate Herbert Simon, had conveyed to me the brilliance of the consultant’s alliance with the client as a two part waltz. The first, ( which fit well with my thinking about the superiority of cloud tags to elevator pitches) was that in determining the consulting contract, the client is initially unsure of which of the consultant’s skills will return value to him. This is met with the willingness of the consultant to emphasize whichever of his skills best fits the task of work agreed upon. That is, in Simon’s language, the consultant is “indifferent” to how his skills are used, within their range of efficacy.

Simon had provided for me in that moment an elegant, delightful description, in economic terms, of the relational psychology between consenting partners in collaborative work. How wonderful to discover that an understanding with which I operated implicitly, had been stated so explicitly and marvelously, long before I was born! What a gift to be able to reference the once known but obscure experience with clarity and precision!

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