The diversity of history and thought has provided us with a wide array of building blocks to construct and make sense of our lives. A few highlights to revive the old memory:

• The Indian sages saw life as an ongoing cycle spinning like a wheel with experiences that mold us into our essential being. They provided us with our sense of the eternal self.
• The Chinese masters thought that Man should endeavor to be in harmony and balance with nature and community. They meticulously observed and recorded the order of things and unlocked many of the secrets of science and art hundreds of years before the West.
• The Abrahamic prophets identified our spiritual precepts and paved the way for these to be organized into monotheistic religions. They urged us to seek grace, pursue salvation and gain the immortality that comes with true belief.
• The Ancient Greek philosophers thought that Man should seek to create perfection in all things: Physical, Intellectual and Spiritual. They gave us our sense of art and Western forms of governance.
• The Roman prefects thought that greatest among men should rise above the fray to pursue their destiny. They used their military power, their prowess in commerce and their skills in engineering to shape the world to their will.
• Renaissance visionaries and Enlightenment revolutionaries found contradictions between what had been prescribed by the clergy and monarchy and what they discovered with their own eyes and instruments. They gave us objective inquiry, the exploration of unseen worlds, both material and scientific, to discern the universal laws that drive our machines and methods.
• Modernist intellectuals told us that there is no divine moral order or absolute reality, and asked us to consider our own biases towards others: Cultural, economic, sex and race. They gave us our sense of prudent skepticism and the voice to question authority.
• Contemporary artists and advertisers showed us images of our best self. They gave us our sense of Romantic love and personal fulfillment, and invited us to join the party.

Of course, these characterizations are generalities and distillations, and there are many more wisdom traditions that contribute to our understanding of the world. They are not mutually exclusive, and we seek them as much now as we did in the past. This is our inheritance, our treasure, our ability to make sense of things.