Knowing

 So lately I’ve spent a lot of time pondering on the idea of knowing and not knowing. For instance, how are supposed to know what another person is thinking if they don’t tell us? On occasion, my Chemistry 2 professor will ask if there are any questions regarding the material he just covered and most of the time his only response comes from the crickets outside. Then he tells us, “I don’t know what you don’t know.” Sounds confusing, but makes perfect sense! How is he supposed to know what part of the material we don’t understand if we don’t tell him about our misunderstandings?!

Anyways, as this crossed my mind the other day I remembered writing something along the same lines a good time ago. I thought I’d never find it… that maybe it was on my old computer— but I found it! It’s crazy to suddenly think about something that you didn’t even realize you had already thought about before… not to mention that you had already written about this thing that you barely even remembered thinking about! Anyways, I hope you enjoy it as much as I did when I found it.

"We don’t know what we don’t know until we realize that what we once thought we knew, we really didn’t know. Think about it: how are we supposed to know what we don’t know if we don’t know what we don’t know? It is a lot like hindsight bias- looking back it seems obvious that we should have known, but by that time it is too late. We just didn’t exactly know what we needed to know when we needed to know it. It is a frustrating concept and one that is inevitable.

Whose job is it to inform us on what we don’t know to know? Why is it that we find ourselves traveling a windy road thinking we know only to end up on top of an isolated hill looking down onto the things we didn’t know to know in the first place? If only there were someone to get it through our heads before it’s too late. Life is full of “if-only’s.” If only I would have known, if only someone would have told me, if only, if only, if only.

Bottom line: mistakes are defined by what we didn’t know and success comes when that little bit we happened to know came in handy."

 I wonder when I wrote that and why... I guess we'll never know— that words is seriously unavoidable!