another lesson learned: it’s easy to get caught up in the every day routine. i haven’t done much of anything besides research and mess around on Microsoft Excel for weeks now — it’s a killer.
Education is important. Acquiring the training and knowledge necessary to pursue my desired ‘practical’ occupation is necessary, essential. However, a large percentage of me, encompassing quite possibly the better part of my torso is hurting from the lack of reading and writing for personal enjoyment, and aching from the presuppositions of others that attending a graduate program or furthering one’s education academically is the only way of being in the world to know much of anything.
You are most likely aware that I am an academic at heart. Language and the expression of it is beautiful. Actions burgeon from ideas, and all of that poetic talk. Yet, it’s like drowning from drinking too much water — I have this coffee mug, and it looks innocent enough, sturdy. I am drinking water from it, but the cup never empties. My thirst never ceases either.
Philosophers recognized this a long time ago. But even if a philosopher is a lover of a wisdom, how does one reconcile never being able to reach a pinnacle, a certainty? The recognition of this bottomless well was acknowledged by both the East and West. Also, a person can learn and know, but never adequately apply, and without application of any sort, it is arguable that such learning is most assuredly wasted.
It states in the Analects (Waley, 1989): “The Master [Confucius] said, Yu, shall I teach you what knowledge is? When you know a thing, to recognize that you know it, and when you do not know a thing, to recognize that you do not know it. That is knowledge” (Book II, pg. 91).
According to various Google sources, in the Lives of Eminent Philosophers, Diogenes Laertius quotes Socrates as saying, “I know nothing except the fact of my ignorance.” Further, in the Apology, Plato reiterates the trial of Socrates, where he states, “Is there not here conceit of knowledge, which is a disgraceful sort of ignorance?” (Jowett, 459).
I hope there is never a time in my life when I am confident in the amount I have learned, in the length of years I have lived. The world keeps rotating. The people keep changing. And we should all keep growing, adapting.
