Wisdom is not being able to explain things - as much as a knowing. It's also the ability to laugh in virtually every situation.
The basic constituent of wisdom is awe. Or as Matthew Fox phrased it, "Awe is the beginning of wisdom." Possibly the best source of such awe struck wisdom is an unobstructed view of a clear, dark night sky without the trace of light or other pollution. Meanwhile, the emotion of awe – and its resulting wisdom – is the sudden realization of truth.
"Just in case you were thinking this is really deep stuff... remember that: "Life is too important to be taken seriously." [G. K. Chesterson]
Emotional wisdom derives from balancing intellectual knowing, physical knowing, and emotional knowing. Each of these begins with an awareness, a self-knowing. When these three elements of wisdom communicate, one is able to make conscious choices – instead of doing the knee-jerk, unconscious thing. Scientific research is already showing that learning does not take place without an emotional component. This is precisely the reason music can aid in learning – with largo (60 beats per minute) Baroque music being just the ticket for aiding in the mental processing.
“By emphasizing only the academic, cognitive, and competitive aspects of education, we lead people into the same kinds of split allegiances of ‘I'm right, you're wrong.'
To be wise, you have to be aware of alternatives, and you have to be able to see other points of view.”
It also implies a willingness and capacity to change one's mind. Politicians are fond of accusing others of “waffling” on issues.
In this regard, “waffling” might be considered an element of wisdom, in that newly revealed facts or points of view are not stonewalled at the brain door, but are instead incorporated into new schemas.
Emotional wisdom is thus a recognition of growth, an ability to change in a constantly changing world, and an openness to learning via a variety of channels. It's not being dead.
Ultimately, of course, wisdom in all its forms is simply a connection with the universe [with others around you]. Instead of an ego-centric, separate self.
To be intuitively or emotionally wise, one must reduce the thinking to manageable levels consistent with other modes of wisdom.
Eckhart Tolle has described the role of a spiritual teacher as ‘an open window through which a breeze is blowing.' It is easy to confuse ‘the breeze', he said, ‘with the window through which the breeze is blowing,” that is, the physical form of a particular person.” Just the sort of thing you might expect from someone with a “quiet and unassuming nature as well as [an] impish and contagious sense of humor.” e.g., Tolle writes:
“We live in a world of mental abstraction, conceptualization, and image-making – a world of thought. And that becomes our dwelling place. It is a world characterized by the inability ever to stop thinking. The mental noise is a continuous stream. Psychologists have found that ninety-five percent or more of it is totally repetitive. Perhaps ten percent of those thought processes, at most, are actually needed to deal with life.
Thought can sometimes be very useful [ laughter ], but in our world it has become obsessive-compulsive, almost like an addiction."
People's sense of identity, of self, gets bound up with their mental concepts and mental images of ‘I' and ‘me'.”