I have come to the conclusion, which has probably been evident to everyone else, that I don't know shit. Every time that I think I have something nailed down, it springs back in my face and smacks a little bit of stupid out of me.
Once again, I will state that I don't know shit. That being said, I will continue on with a few tidbits that I believe to be true.
I had an interesting discussion with a good friend a few months back that I have been brewing in the back of my mind. We tossed around the theory that with each decade of life our view of what we know alters a bit, starting in the 20's.
I recall some of my time in my 20's and find it to be fairly evident that I knew everything there was to know; even more so than I did when I was a teenager. This time around, I had a college education to lean on when I would spout off my conclusions about people and life and the world. I knew what I wanted and where I wanted to go and what I wanted to do. I knew everything I needed to know and knew that I would learn all the rest as the next few years passed by. I am unsure (which is a statement that is becoming more prevalent) if believing I so omnipotent came from simply being young and full of piss and vinegar and drive and naivete or if I felt like I should know everything because all adults know everything. Right?
As a kid, all I knew was pretty basic stuff. But I knew that whatever I didn't know could be answered by a grown up. I remember asking my dad how far the eye could see. He had to know because he was an adult. I wonder if something in my subconscious grabbed on to this nugget and held it as a truth. As I got older and experienced things, my wisdom and ego began to grow with each discovery. The crazy thing is, each time I thought I knew something, something would come around and show me another side of things. I would hastily erase the mental blackboard and change what I knew to this new thing. And this was a constant; absolutes. What I learned was the truth of it. It was all so black and white.
Writing that down reminds of a text conversation a few nights back with a friend, Red, who is in her early 20's. She has discovered that not everything is absolute. Her texts that followed were flavored with the fear, I think, that comes with this discovery. She is the type of person who likes to be right and who is able to move forward all the time because her course of action is "right". I wish I could have lived, and even could live now, in that way. I wish my mind worked like that. But it doesn't. I believe, now, that nothing is but what it is.
That makes no sense, except in my head. I think I will be able to clear it up as I go on.
To get back to absolutes, nothing is. It is a scary thing to learn. What you thought was right and good is not always as right and good as you thought it was. I was raised on the ten commandments and the word of the bible. When I had my breakup with Christianity, I had my first taste of living in the gray. Red had this same discovery. It takes years for it to work its way through the dogma that has been built up for most of your life and during that time you learn more and more of what you don't know. Then you hit your 30's.
In my discussion with my good friend, we came up with the hypothesis that the 30's is that time when you figure out that you don't know shit. This is not an absolute; there are probably people who are well into the 30 somethings and still know everything (or at least believe they do). I don't. This past couple of years has shown me that. I know more now than I did before. Tomorrow, I will know more still, but I won't know everything. I won't be even close. One thing I have learned is that I can answer the basic questions a child might have. If I had a son, he would think I knew it all just as I thought my dad did. I think about what my father might have been thinking when I asked him that question. He didn't know how far the eye can see, not really. He was probably as lost and ignorant about life as I am now.
I have been struggling with the idea that my parents have never had all the answers, that no one's parents have ever had all the answers. As a kid, grown ups knew about life and everything in it. As a grown up I can see that we are all lost and wandering around with only the compass of our experience to guide us. I might be able to spout off some factoids now and again, which my mother has always been good at, but when it comes to life, I don't know shit.
My friend is in his 40's. He said that he believes that when you hit that benchmark you begin to see that you might know more than you thought you did. What you have gained that separates your new found "know-it-all" with what you thought you knew 20 years ago is humility. You know what you know, and it is a lot, but you know that you still have so much to learn and the answers that you do have are "your" answers. They might not be the answers for everyone else. I think this is called wisdom.
One thing I have learned is that no one knows everything. No one has all of the answers. This may be the only absolute that I will hold on to. I wonder what my 50's and 60's will hold.
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