We place so much value on knowledge, which is vital, but what we seem to forget is that it's impossible to know everything and that's both a great and awful thing.
Anyone who has ever studied anything will understand that there is a point where we thought we knew about something, we taught about what we thought we knew and years later it turned out to be utter bullshit. Prime example: for years we thought that smoking was actually healthy, heck doctors even encouraged it! However in 1964 Luther Terry released his discovery that smoking is linked to lung cancer...need I say more.
Sometimes to understand something we have to accept the fact that we will never be able to fully understand it. More recently, I read Jonathan Culler's "A very short introduction to literature theory" and in that book he says that to understand literature theory, we first have to understand that we will never understand literature theory. Confusing? Maybe, but he does have a good point.
Recently, in my own life I have come across a road block, which I didn't believe would engulf me as much as it has. This problem doesn't have a simple solution and I'm having to accept the fact that as much as I try, it won't be fixed as quickly as I would like it to be. It doesn't matter the amount of effort and research I put into it, there is no quick fix.
This brings me to my next point, society cares too much about quick fixes and solutions in general and although they feel amazing in the sort term, in the long term they completely screw us all over. Got a problem? Google it. Who the hell cares if the information is actually accurate, easy access am I right? Let's face it, we've all gotten to that point where we are working on something and we are beyond tired, so we hit Wikipedia or Google translate and boom! Problemo solved. That is until you hand in the work and somehow it has all been completely lost in translation, so you either have to explain yourself or actually go back and painstakingly slave over a new version of the same piece of work. I don't know about you, but I don't have the patience for that kind of thing.
Now we have another issue, patience. We have lost the ability to live life in the slow lane and I find that super annoying because I would actually find more solutions to things if I actually took my time or gave things a chance to work. And there's yet another issue, we place so much emphasis on finding answers for ourselves that we forget that it's okay to collaborate and ask for help.
During my secondary school years, it was drummed into us that the teacher was the absolute last point of call, in fact it was deemed better to fail having done the work entirely solo rather than pass having asked for help with a few misunderstandings. What the fuck was up with that? Suddenly I'm at college where it is deemed okay to ask for help and I'll actually go out of my way to avoid it. It sounds stupid and it absolutely is. I've had to learn the hard way that it is, in fact, in my best interest to ask for guidance.
We have to learn all this stuff the hard way. I really wish it didn't work like that. I wish that we had been taught that we don't have to know everything about everything, so that we wouldn't deem it necessary or acceptable to call another person naive or thick for a lack of knowledge. I wish that we were taught that it was deemed better to find the best solution rather than the quickest.
Going back to the problem I mentioned earlier. There is no easy fix and there is no quick fix and there is no way I am ever going to understand the full extent of the problem, let alone find a solution to it. I have come to accept this. No, acceptance isn't cynical or complacent, it just means that I have accepted that I am completely out of my depth and don't understand yet how to take back control of the situation.
So what am I going to do now? I'm going to accept the fact that there is no quick solution and get stuck in traffic going the slow route. I would rather take my time and go over the "deadline" than hurt myself anymore than I already have. To top it all off: I am going to get better at communicating about my lack of understanding.
Take it from me, an writer on the internet (reliable enough). Take your time. There isn't a solution to everything and that's okay because that's what makes life so interesting. Above all else, don't be ashamed of your confusion or lack of knowledge. Own it so that we can all be confused, slow, accepting and curious together.
I'm going to own it right now. In this exact moment.
I don't understand much. I probably understand less than I think that I understand. I probably know less than I think that I know. There's nothing wrong with that, I'm trying to take life at my own pace and some days that will be easy and some days it won't be. Some days I'll be a cheetah and some days I'll be a sloth. It's all okay and it's all going to be okay.
Let me reiterate: I have a problem and I reject the idea that I need to solve it instantly. I have no time limit and I'm not going to let anyone else tell me that I do when I decidedly do not.
I want to solve this problem for my own benefit. That isn't selfish, that's what we should all aspire to: Attempting to face/ solve problems simply because we want to.
I have this problem that I don't know how to solve YET and I have accepted the fact that I may not ever find a solution, but I'm still trying (albeit currently behind the scenes) and I'm going at my own pace despite the fact that it may not suit other people.
I still want to talk through the process with other people and be completely out of my depth and actually ask for advice because there isn't any shame in it. Other people may not understand how to help and guess what? That's completely okay too because at least they know and that means that we don't have to be alone in confusion.
I sincerely hope that society gets better at acknowledging that you can't fix everything with the click of a button, that you don't have to solve everything by yourself and above all else that IT IS OKAY NOT TO KNOW, because it is through this lack of knowledge that we find our spirit of adventure, our urge to ask questions, understand each other and discover an entirely new way of navigating our days, through new thoughts and new meanings and new confusion...
- Amello
