Friday, May 26, 2017

The Perils of Knowing Stuff


How I have read, pondered!

I've even meditated and researched! I have layers of useless information that could make a stone move itself downstream to escape.

The years I have dedicated to deep thinking and wondering where my socks were! A person might think my sacrifice would be right up there with Joan of Arc. I imagined myself  deserving of a paragraph in the annals of Philosophy. Sweating caffeine bullets into the night to find things which I believed you needed to be, "Informed" about. Surely, I thought, my name would be emblazoned with the likes of Plato and Socrates and -and...some other guy. ;)

I've been afflicted with information that I needed to bestow upon the masses more than once, and suffer, I did. So did they. They were not interested in my intellectual generosity much less my bestowing. One learns to develop a peculiar penchant for dodging boulders, or stop that and start learning stuff.I'm still starting, by the way. :)

If you ever find me thinking I know something, run. While unconfirmed, I'm concerned it might be contagious. Unfortunately, in my case, it appears to be chronic.

I'd rather not know a thing or another thing. Knowing means I'm finished learning. Now, I'm certainly inclined to think things, risky as that may be. I suspect a lot of things, but I know nothing. I'm almost sure of it.

Sometimes I come across people who know things. A moment of silence, please for those suffering......

Those poor, tortured souls! Imagine being finished discovering, yet still breathing. Cerebral zombies of enlightenment, and they may well know. Just in case, I walk a wide circle around them, so I don't catch it.It turns out that people warm up more to being my teachers than my proteges. That helps, because I don't know anything. Everyone teaches me something, and the best way I've heard for me to get someone to listen is to...listen.

It's also effective when I want to learn...so far.Curiously, I've found the longer I listen, the more likely it is that I'll hear what I was so bent on sharing put more eloquently than I had planned it, myself.

Annoying, really. ;) In that case, I learn an instance of humility, or that a blow to the ego is not likely to kill me ... yet.

Still learning, and thanks for listening.

tinajonesart