The Scenario Of Impossible Learning

One curse of adulthood that I could think of is know-it-all syndrome. Let's face it, when you grow up you are supposed to become responsible and so you learn things to help you navigate all that jazz. Then, after awhile, as you practice implementing all that accumulated knowledge, you start attaining this other thing, the prestige of wisdom.

Oh how the bite of acclaim stings. It's one of those feel good things that gets you into trouble. It feels good when people think you are smart and wise. It feels doubly good when people come and seek advice from you like the sages of old.

What doesn't feel good is not knowing. Whether it's truly not being aware of something or the perception that others think you don't know, so you always gotta have an answer lest others think you are, well, an ignoramus! GASP!

The problem that arises, aside from believing in your own mythos, is intellectual arrogance loves to raise its grotesque little head when we start getting all prideful, and my friends, there is nothing more prideful than thinking you know ALL the things.

How many times have you thought you knew all about something, only to be smacked in the reality bone by a situation that displayed to the world that you truly did not know it all at all.

I've been there. It's no bueno.

Ego is the roadblock to growth. Self-deception is the speed bump. My goal is to examine my motives daily to see if I am necessarily hostile to both. They are gross.

Confidence in your abilities is not the same thing as being resistant to learning because you think you got it all down in regards to the realm of knowledge, learning, and wisdom. Plus, who wants to hang around someone who's a hubris heathen anyway? They'd constantly be preening like a puffed up peacock and Musk knows how fatiguing taking in a personality like that all the time would be.

One exercise I use to catch myself being all ego-y is to reflect inwardly every time I say the words, I know. Do I know, or am I projecting a state that I don't attain just to stroke my own ego? Asking yourself the hard questions yields all the good fruit, as growth means you let down the pride walls so that you could learn, whereas delusions of self-deception grandeur mean at some point you are going to sprawl face first into one of Life's many mud puddles of existential pot holes. Good times.

Another way that I fight the self-deception fight is to just do more shutting up instead of blathering. It's so, so easy to flow into a conversation about how awesome we are, kind of like a joy-killing pyroclastic personality flow that smothers true dialogue because the interactions with others become less we focused and more me focused. Sure, everyone loves to share about themselves, but when it becomes all about our selves and less about community, well, ego needs to be vanquished from the party.

And this is not to say I have all the answers as to how to approach the realm of staying humble enough to learn so that I well, learn. I don't, and that's okay because I am a flawed human being who's trying to do my best to march through this life one day at a time. Until we go we get to get up each day and try to be amazing through our conduct, which is pretty awesome if you think about it!