verb: to have information in your mind; used to ask someone to tell you a piece of information; to be certain; to be familiar with or have experience and understanding; to recognise something or someone
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I know nothing. By which I mean I don’t know anything. But surely to make such an assertion I must know that I know nothing? That in itself is knowledge, so I must conclude that I don’t know nothing after all. I do know something. But then, if what I know is that I know nothing, yet I do indeed know something, then what I know is in error and not truly knowledge at all. Which brings me back to knowing nothing. Which is impossible, because by stating that I know nothing I am demonstrating knowledge. Who’d have thought knowing something could be so confusing?
They do say “a little knowledge is a dangerous thing”. Maybe that’s why. Maybe the confusion it causes is dangerous. I wonder: is it the knowledge that’s dangerous or the thinking we do around it? Speaking for myself, I’d be a lot less flummoxed right now if I’d left our introduction at “I know nothing”. Even a simple addition like “I am from Barcelona” wouldn’t have been overly problematic. But actually thinking about it? That’s downright dangerous! I should know better…
I do know better. I know myself and I know the problems overthinking can cause. Unfortunately, knowing that something is beneficial or detrimental doesn’t seem to make it easier to do or not do that particular thing. On the face of it, it seems a simple matter to do something if you know you should, or not if you know you shouldn’t. But how many times have you known people – perhaps even yourself – make excuses to put off simple, obvious things they know they should do? Things like going to the doctors about a (hopefully) minor but persistent ailment, visiting a relative you haven’t seen in years, doing a bit of spring cleaning, or simply making the time to have a decent meal or a good night’s rest. Why does knowing these things are worth doing not make us more inclined to do them?
Is it laziness? I’m all for simple answers, but to write this off as mere laziness seems… well… lazy. And why do we persist in behaviours we know are detrimental? I know there can be hidden complications in some cases, like addiction, for example. But under normal circumstances how can knowingly taking action which causes you harm be described as anything other than insanity? Yet, an alarmingly high percentage of the population choose to do exactly that every single day…
We know sitting around most of the day is harmful, but countless people do it. We know stress is bad for us – not to mention stressful! – but people allow things (and other people) to affect them to the point of becoming stressed about them. We know it’s not good for us to eat late, but people love a midnight snack. We know spending too long staring at screens is bad for our eyes, dopamine regulation and, depending on what’s on said screen, our cognitive reasoning skills, but how many people do you see constantly glued to their phones?
I wonder, how many knowingly poor choices do you make in an average week? If the answer is none or very low, is that because you don’t make poor choices or because you’re not aware of them? I’ve heard it said that the hardest person to know is yourself. Ignorance may be bliss, but how can you solve a problem if you don’t even know it exists? Serendipity alone is unlikely to solve all life’s problems for you… Or is it? Maybe you’re lucky enough that things will always work out for you, whatever you do! If you know this to be true and feed it into your subconscious, then that’s exactly how it will be: however long it may take.
With that, dear reader, I must love you and leave you, safe in the knowledge that you wouldn’t dream of doing anything as harmful as thinking too much.
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