The awkwardness of expertise

“People suck.” “Skin is stupid.”

These are actual statements made by my doctor in our most recent appointment, the first being a comment on the origins of the outdated food pyramid, the second with reference to the issue which had led me to seek the appointment, a skin issue.

There may be some truth to each comment, but what stands out about them is their puerile nature, the way they sound like an angsty teen as opposed to a seasoned professional. When I hear these comments, it immediately becomes more difficult for me to take seriously whatever follows, thus undermining my doctor’s efficacy.

This dynamic makes me want to reflect on expertise in general, since it is not, after all, a requirement that my doctor be wise. Instead, the requirement is that my doctor be an expert in the medical field, meaning they possess rarefied knowledge, acquired through years of study. In a sense, the doctor needs to possess domain-specific wisdom—that is, they need to be able to sort deftly among medical knowledge and to make nuanced and helpful inferences.

However, to the degree my doctor does not appear to be wise in their motions outside this body of knowledge, I become less trusting of or interested in them and thus more closed off to this domain-specific wisdom. Therefore, carrying oneself in a manner that communicates intention, presence, and depth behooves an expert of any field.

The paradox is that these sorts of wisdom may be counterposed. After all, getting through medical school requires drive, an ability to ignore one’s corporeal needs, and often, a haste about selecting one’s vocational path, all of which qualities negate the kind of happenstance through which wisdom is formed. Often, beginning doctors are intelligent, young, narrow-minded people, successful people in the eyes of a system that produces knowledge, not wisdom. On the flip-side, some of the wisest people in life are those for whom the career path may be the sloppiest, or least predictable; these people have suffered a mid-life crisis, the loss of a spouse or child, a bout of alcoholism, etc.

The questions, then, are twofold: 1) Is it possible for people to become both wise in the worldly sense and knowledgeable in the sense of expertise? And 2) Is this combination to be desired, or should we simply accept that expertise can be delivered without wisdom?

To the first question, the answer is obviously yes. Some people are patently born with more wisdom than others, meriting the term “old soul” and walking a life-path that is smoother, more humble, more graceful. Additionally, so-called late bloomers can arrive at career plateaus later in life, having taken wisdom-forming detours prior to committing, having previously held a separate career, or being more eclectic in their ambitions, etc. In any case, it is possible for a doctor both to know the minutiae of the human body and to pose as interpersonally wise.

To the second question, I would argue that we should not accept a world in which subject expertise and wisdom are mutually exclusive. Although fellow medical experts might be able to hear through the foliage of comments like “Skin is stupid” and to access the wisdom underneath, to the lay person—or the wise person—these statements reek of adolescent cynicism, and they come across as overly coarse and therefore invalidating for the speaker. Instead, speaking—and behaving—in ways that are elegant, kind, and perspicacious offers up the expert to the ears of the uninitiated, providing the missing ingredient to render their knowledge more accessible. In other words, a warm and wise disposition disarms skepticism.

The addendum to this discussion is that there is no formula to induce wisdom, as wisdom first requires contact with the unexpected. Perhaps there are some our creator has designated without need of this intervention, and whom that creator has allowed to navigate life in a manner that is quick, linear, and credentialed. In all other cases, wisdom is a choice in the aftermath of the unexpected; it flows from fidelity to reality, inner investigation, and softening into—not steeling ourselves against—life’s intentions.