Tuesday, April 08, 2008

Miss Know-It-All

Did you go through the phase as a teenager in which you truly believed that you possessed knowledge of all things? I did. Casey would argue that I still believe this. Ok, fine. Sometimes I can be a know-it-all. I like knowing things. I don't like being in the dark about things - especially when information is available about them. It is for this reason that I have always enjoyed learning.

I have also always been an analytical person, but I distinctly remember sometime in high school, when I realized that there is so much more to analyze in the grey areas than in the black and white. I think this is why I am drawn to literature and why I ultimately decided to major in English in college. True, grammar is pretty black and white, but actually, that was my least favorite part of my studies. And there are books that leave very little to be determined or interpreted by the reader, but again, these are not my most favorite reading experiences. Somewhere along the way, I came to appreciate the value, the reality, and even the beauty of uncertainty.

When I was thinking about all of this the other day, I realized that I am much less certain of some things now than I ever have been. The fact that some things are fuzzier than ever is actually a sort of clarity for me. This is probably not more true than in my spiritual journey. I am not as certain about things as I used to think I was. But this is not as scary of a place to be as I probably would have once thought it was either. Sometimes, the more you know, the more you don't know.

2 comments:

Lindsay said...

Very Wise Wise words!

gayle said...

The first paragraphy of this blog, I can totally relate to--that is how I am as well. That is pretty much how I got the nickname "Bossy Gayle" from a friend of mine (it was meant as a term of endearment, I promise).

Case in point: I do not watch NCAA basketball, so when I was invited out to watch the game yesterday, I logged into the website so I could know what was going on, know the stats, and not be confronted with watching a game I knew nothing about and could not get excited about.

There are too many different and interesting things in life to stop learning about them, no matter how small or trivial they might be. You never know when the information you know might be needed and called to mind!