Quantity Issue: Are knowledge and wisdom a function of time?

The general idea that most people tend to accept as truth is that knowledge and wisdom are a function of time and experience. The more time invested in an endeavor, the more knowledge, wisdom, skill, etc. will be earned or achieved. This concept is generally applied in multiple aspects of life: sports, art, music, relationships, etc. We believe that this is an incorrect approach and we will offer our insight as to why, focusing on the relationship aspect in this article.

We offer an idea that we have coined the quantity issue, or TQI. Contrary to the generally accepted truth as mentioned above, TQI can be used to explain that knowledge and wisdom are a not function of time. In a relationship context, one may incorrectly assume that having multiple partners or a long-standing relationship/marriage equates to more wisdom or knowledge gained. While there may be wisdom and knowledge gained through multiple experiences, they do not directly correlate to that assumption. Let’s break this down into a specific example to better understand.

Let’s take a couple that has been married for 40 years. On the surface one might assume “40 years is a long time, this must mean this couple has it figured out.” There could be a myriad of factors that have kept the couple together for that long and fulfillment, happiness, and satisfaction in the communicative process may not be anywhere on that list. This couple may be horribly toxic, co-dependent, unhappy, feeling stuck or trapped, etc. The couple may not have learned how to communicate well with each other at all, and that wouldn’t be adequately explained if we only examined the duration of the relationship – there is more to the story.

We can also look at a personal example of mine. Previously to being with Jaclyn, the longest relationship that I was in was for approximately 8 years, married for 4.5 of those years. I was with my x-wife for a longer time period than I have currently been with Jaclyn; however, the quality of relationship is a night and day difference with my current relationship with Jaclyn being infinitely more fulfilling. The biggest issue in that relationship, amongst all of the other dysfunction, was the communication issue. If we were evaluating the quality of relationship strictly from the function of time, the result would not coincide with the generally accepted truth discussed earlier. This further substantiates that there is more at play when attempting to diagnose or take stock of the quality of relationship.

The reason why we bring this topic up is because we want people to understand that communicating effectively in a partnership is achievable regardless of time duration or quantity of partnerships. Length of time does not impact quality of experience. Nor does the length of time necessarily equal gained knowledge and wisdom. The only thing time equates to is experience. One could experience the same issue, or situation, multiple times until he/she finally recognizes the experience for what it is, and if desired, changes it.

Hopefully this has been insightful and offers a deeper understanding that duration of time in a relationship is not a function of and in most cases is irrelevant to the quality of relationship.

-Jason