Grandmother Wisdom

I’m obviously a big fan of Nassim Taleb’s work and his concept that most academics are not nearly as wise as your grandmother was a concept that was very sticky in my mind. My grandmother was always the voice of reason in my family. She was the matriarch, she held everyone and everything together. 

I’m sure many of you know I run the Fat Tony Account on Twitter, and if ya don’t know now ya know. Funny story, if the projections are correct, my daughter was actually conceived the same week I created the account, go figure. Being a father for the first time was both exciting and terrifying. I felt I needed guidance, wisdom. My grandmother died in 2006 but this idea prompted me to go back and read some of the things she left for us. There were so many powerful concepts I learned from reading her letters, poems, and songs she loved. I went so deep into the concept that my wife and I decided to name our daughter after our grandmothers.

This prompted another idea. My Fat Tony account was much larger than my real Twitter account, still is, so why not reach out to my Twitter followers and ask them to give me quotes from their grandmothers. It would be a really cool way to leverage wisdom from the wise old sages that raised us. Obviously there would be some trolls in the mix and some people would have blatantly obvious fake quotes, but some might be inspiring and prompt ideas. Very little downside, with lots of upside, which is my kinda party. So I tweeted out to my followers and asked them to send me their grandmothers’ best heuristics. At this point there are over 150 quotes and I’ve compiled them into an Amazon Alexa Skill application called Grandmother Wisdom. It has been well received so far so I decided why not expand this even further.

I’ve spent the last few days building a book that I’ll be launching soon. I want to keep building on this process because it feels so timely. Many of our grandparents lived through the best of times, and the worst. We are currently living through one of the most pivotal times in history. To get through it I’d rather rely on the wisdom, tact, and common sense of our elders than the Johnny Come Lately "experts" that got us into this mess.

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