Dateline: Lake Geneva, WI
January 21, 2018
I don’t know.
That sentence is so much more important in my life than it was when I was younger.
My own inability to know or understand some things is so important to me. I live in a world where such self-analysis and criticism seems foreign and contra-indicated for survival. ‘We’ don’t know is an extension of my own conclusion. We don’t know so much but we make believe we do. We don’t know what an electron looks like or it if really exists. Really. Scientists who study this only know that the electron they created is the thing that describes what it is that an electron invisibly does.
We don’t know where or when the universe started or what it really is. At all. Theories have changed all the time, and are still changing about that, from my childhood until now.
I don’t know who much of the stuff inside my modern automobile works. I can’t make the speedometer give me a digital report on speed (those big numbers on the electronic dash thing) except by accident. I celebrate when the numbers appear and then am glum when they go away and I see I have one pound of air too little in my left rear tire. I read the manual and still can’t figure it out. I tell no one because many people think I’m smart and I kinda want them to keep thinking that for reasons I also don’t know.
I don’t know how to bake bread, although I’ve been shown at least a dozen times and even done it a couple of times with them. I watch the television every day and come up on the Internet. It seems, from looking at this and that stuff, that most people know a whole lot more than I do, but I also know that isn’t true.
Some people can’t name the V.P. of the U.S. and I am astounded, but then recall, until this government shutdown, that I thought the head of the Senate’s first name was Mike, not Mitch. How could I have screwed that up in my mind?
I do know that I must continue to ‘fake it to make it’ even though I don’t really know what makes it looks or feels like. Nobody will read my writing if they know how much I really don’t know. They’ll think I made it up. Do I make it up? I have talent but it’s weird talent. I remember my credit card numbers and I have a few, even when the company sends new ones and changes them marginally. I know my times’ tables and can still solve algebra problems, which is about as useful as I don’t know what.
I can’t do so much with my iPhone X that I won’t even discuss that here. I am convinced that much of the new electronic stuff secretly laugh at people like me and that the programmers are doing that on purpose.
I wonder what they don’t know.
Good morning on this cold but comforting Sunday.
I don’t know : Sometimes as I age I realize that I forget now more easily things like some memories words and sequences . I realize that with age we may be more experienced but we never know everything .Things chnge so rapidly with technology , with science and with people . Each day is new and there are new experiences we can live or choose not to experience . Humans are so complex . even if we know someone really well we never really know everything about them such as what they are thinking or what they know or do not know . heck we don’t like lousy know it all and we never will . The best thin I find is to be like a child again Hide all our feelings of shame and not knowing and ask what why where about the things we don’t know / We are all learning and growing all our lives unless we stop asking and doing and then we might as well be dead . So keep on asking keep on meeting different people go on trips and adventures . keep in contact with the good things in life and enjoy the process of not knowing and seeking that which you do not know . This is what life is about . .. And I am glad I met people such as yourself because you share your experiences , and feelings, life with others and I feel I am going through the same processes as questioning and wondering what this life and world are really all about . Peace and love to you and yours .. and All the best . Karen.
Karen, you’ve been with me a long time on Facebook and it shows why in the reading of your comment. The depth and the feeling. You are
an amazing human being and a woman of some substance. I much enjoy the smile that almost always transforms my facial features when I read what you have written
on here and on Facebook. Thanks so much for sharing and caring…
Semper fi,
Jim
Your statement in the first paragraph “We don’t know so much but we make believe we do” says it all. To many of us are sadly in this situation.
Just maybe we can all focus on changing that circumstance,
Thanks, for your input, Bill,
Jim
“I don’t know” is an integral part of how I operate. If I’m working on something, I may know one or two facts about it and then I subconsciously, or automatically, build a mental construct to fill in the huge void which gets replaced, incrementally, by substantiated facts as I progress on the project. The mental construct rarely resembles the true picture but I need something there if I am to make progress. I notice other people doing the same and some assume the mental construct is fact. Sounds like a hazardous way to live but they seem to get by.
Neat thoughtful reply Ira. Thanks for that cerebral comment…
Semper fi,
Jim
Good start, Sir. Sort of breaking the jam built by whatever nasty river rat built in the back of your mind. The rest should come, not more easily p, but surely it will. God Bless, poppa
Thanks Poppa. Indeed, I am back…
Semper fi,
Jim
You don’t know what you don’t know and there’s no way you can. If you could then the phrase wouldn’t exist. One can wonder and speculate on things they don’t know but cannot make an informed decision because they don’t know. The people in Vietnam could not imagine what life was like back in the real world because they don’t know. Just like people here who have never had your experience in Vietnam can really ever understand it. They don’t know because they were never in your shoes. Even us vets who were never in your situation can really understand it. We have a small bite if it at best. This is why 30 Days has September is
so important to help us all understand what raw war is and the horror of it. So maybe some of us do know rather than “don’t know”.
Thanks Jim for the depth of your response and for reading and really understanding the article…
Semper fi,
Jim
you sound normal and like you are getting older, two ok things. I think you don’t need to know everything, just enough to keep going. I do think I know your speedometer read out it broke, if warranty exists, use it. Electronics can be temperature sensitive or something is dying a slow death in one of the computers running your car.
I wonder if it is more the inconvenience of getting things fixed rather than the cost that bothers you most as you age,,,
Semper fi,
Jim
Interesting perspective to have on a Sunday!
Why is anybody, the one that doesn’t know? The answer however, is simple but not easy! That last sentence should be read again because the answer, as some of us survive to figure out, is neither easy nor simple! It actually is, “however”! Is there any better word in the english language? Well, if there were then, what it is…I simply don’t know! What’s real easy, is to act like I do! Yet here’s the truth for all who might say,” It is what it is”…
I say, “whatever”! Because the best answer isn’t simply “I don’t know”!
The best answer, at least as it applies to the written word is,
“I don’t know…however, I know how to find it!” Sunday Smiles
Really neat reply Dennis. Thanks for the intellectual display here…
Semper fi,
Jim
Peace…
Thanks James!
Semper fi,
Jim
I used to think I had to “kn ow” to answer my children’s questions. I found it was effective to show them how to find the answer themselves.
Well, there is that philosophy. The root Greek work for education means ‘to draw from,’ and it says nothing about ‘give to.’
Semper fi,
Jim
There is more power in the question than there is in the answer. I left a lenghty comment on your Third Ten Days FB page.
Thanks Mike, much appreciated the lengthy comment…
Semper fi,
Jim