"The tree of knowledge is NOT the tree of life. Those that know the most, must mourn the deepest." These are thoughts from George Byron. George was an English poet with a title. This is America so he can keep the title in England. At any rate, Byron seems to believe that you need to be intelligent to truly understand sorrow.
I am not certain that he is right about that. I think all people have the ability to feel sorrow, regardless of whether they are smart or not.I have known many intelligent people over the years, and many fools as well. All have felt sorrow at one point or another. I think the ability to feel sorrow has less to do with intelligence, than the ability to feel empathy for others. You can be the smartest person in the world, yet if you can't feel empathy, then its likely you will never know deep sorrow. Narcissists seem not to feel sorrow. If they did, they would likely not go through life hurting people with their self-centered actions. Byron seemed to be a narcissist, he had multiple lovers of both sexes, and he really didn't seem to care whether they were married or not. It is these actions that make me think that he didn't care about anything but himself. Still, Byron was a well-known poet of the romantic movement. and he was well educated for his day. It's possible that he was able to separate the sorrow he felt, from the potential sorrow he caused others. Do intelligent people feel sorrow more deeply? Or are they just better able to express their feelings? A well educated person likely has a fuller vocabulary than someone who is not well schooled. On the surface, that would make it seem like they felt sorrow more deeply. Having a title, it's likely that Byron rarely felt the sorrow of the lower class. What he saw, he saw from a distance, and that likely colored his view. When I started writing this post I had chosen sorrow as a topic because the mother of one of Madison's friends died yesterday. Maddie and I stopped by her house today (I am also friends with her grand parents) to drop off some food and pay our respects. Speaking with the grandmother I felt great empathy for her. It had nothing to do with my intelligence, or hers. It had to do with the look of pain that crossed her face on occasion and in the fact that I knew the feelings she was feeling as did Maddie. We have both suffered a great loss in our lives and we could feel the woman's pain since we had experienced a similar loss. Some lessons from the tree of knowledge (and the tree of life for that matter) are better left unknown. As for Byron, much of his work is forgettable in my opinion. As is this quote. Leave him and his writing for the Greeks. They revere him.
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