What do i know?
Written by Ken Fernandez
I am currently teaching a finance class at Mountain View High School once a week. I am working as a support or as an advisor for the class. They have a full-time teacher. It is a good class with mostly high achievers. They get college credits for the class. I remember being their age and thinking that I had a pretty good idea about life. Like all 17-year old’s, I felt I was above average in worldly knowledge and wisdom.
This week I started by asking them this question. Because I am older and thus wiser than you are, is there anything you could teach me? They were hesitant to answer the question. Then I shared this quote with them from Ralph Waldo Emerson:
“Every man I meet is in some way my superior, and in that, I can learn of him.”
I told them that each one of them has more knowledge in many areas than I do. That if I had the combined knowledge of the class, I would be one of the most intelligent people alive. And yet with all of the knowledge, it would pale compared to the wisdom of the world. There have been over 158 million books written in the world. And yet there is so much history, wisdom, and information that has never been printed.
What I have discovered over the years as I gain more knowledge is this. The more I learn the more I discover how little I know. And what I have been discovering recently, as I have become aware of this fact is, that others before me have discovered the same.
“Whatever it is, the way you tell your story online can make all the difference.”
“Education is a progressive discovery of our ignorance.”
“I believe it is worthwhile to discover more about the world, even if this only teaches us how little we know. It might do us good to remember from time to time that, while differing widely in the various bits we know, in our infinite ignorance we are all equal.”
Karl Popper. “I believe it is worthwhile to discover more about the world, even if this only teaches us how little we know. It might do us good to remember from time to time that, while differing widely in the various bits we know, in our infinite ignorance we are all equal.”
The purpose of gaining knowledge is not so that we can prove to others how intelligent and wise we are. Because we are neither, maybe it’s so we can become more teachable. We should ask questions of others and then sincerely listen to the answers. Stephen Covey said, “We don’t listen to understand, we listen to reply, the collective monolog is, everyone talking and no one listening.” Something else that Covey said years ago that I loved was this. “Good you see it differently than I do, help me to understand.”
We live in a world of ego-driven madness. We all want to be written. Even to a degree that we will hurt others if they don’t agree with us. I am not talking about physical abuse, though there is far too much of that. I am talking about mental abuse to others, to be right. And typically this happens with the people we love the most. I can remember more than once coming home from work after a very difficult day. A day in which my ego took a beating. And then taking it out on my children. Why, because I could. I was mentally superior to them, and they would easily forgive me. I hated myself for that. What kind of dad was I? More than once I would find myself sitting on the edge of their bed that same night, asking for their forgiveness. And they would, always. You see, because in reality, they were much wiser than I was because they hadn’t yet become so wise in the ways of the world.
A couple of years ago, while I was watching my four-year-old granddaughter, Blythe, I got angry for something she did and yelled at her. The next day I went by her house and told her mom that I needed to talk to her on the porch. We sat on the porch and talked. I apologized to her for getting angry the day before. She smiled and said it was okay. I hugged her and sent her back inside and left. My daughter Merry called me a few minutes later and asked me why I wanted to talk to Blythe. I said, “Did you ask her.” She replied that she had and Blythe said, “I don’t know.” A grudge that we could carry for weeks, a much wiser four-year-old had forgiven and forgotten in moments. How beautiful is that?