What I Don't Know
Entry posted by malign
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It occurs to me to ask myself how badly do I need to know what I don't know.
Now, I realize that could sound conceited, but it's not. I'm readily aware of how much there is left to know. Nor am I at risk of losing my curiosity to find out more.
But after approximately half a century here, the question is, how much more knowledge do I really need? Are there more facts that I need, in order to be happy/content/satisfied with my life?
It seems to me that the answer is no. In fact, the facts that I do know have contributed relatively little to my satisfaction. They do interest me; they give me the opportunity to make conversation, or at least to show off my ability at recall.
But what's going to make me happy to have lived isn't going to be how much I knew, but how well I used it; how well I integrated knowledge into the life of a whole human.
This naturally leads to the question of what else it takes to make a whole human. You'll have to pardon me if that seems obvious to you. To me, growing up, intellect was the only quality I recognized in myself, and the only skill I made an effort to develop. I'd say it's about time I came up with a coherent plan to develop the rest of it ...
I'm only going to list other traits here. I suspect other people's strengths and weaknesses are quite different from mine, in many cases. But for me, I would like to continue to increase my empathy and connection to my emotions, my intuition, and my creativity. It's not that I truly lack any of these qualities; I tend to believe that we're all born "complete", with all the raw materials we need to build a complete human. It's just that we need to practice them, try them out on different problems to see which ones work for each, and then to use them in our daily lives.
I'll let you know how it goes.
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