“We are all sculptors and painters and our material is our own flesh and bones.” – Henry David Thoreau
I have come to embrace my ignorance. Even if I live to be a hundred, I realize I will never know as much as I had hoped for and will forever remain ignorant of many things. If all the knowledge in the world were contained in a single volume, I would still be stuck in the preface.
But, I don’t view my ignorance as a bad thing-in fact I think it’s good. It compels me to want to learn; carve out a slice of my world and try to learn more about it; to always maintain a sense of wonder and awe at what surrounds me. And, it’s never too late to learn something new.
I believe failure and ignorance are better teachers than success or thinking you know it all (i.e. arrogance). Success, I think, often breeds complacency while failure teaches one to be humble and endeavor to never stop learning (learn from your mistakes, right?) But be careful how high the pedestal is that you place yourself on – it can be a long way down when you fall. As they say, pride goeth before a fall. And it isn’t the fall that will hurt, it’s that sudden stop.
There’s an old saying that ignorance is bliss but not always true in my case. My mistakes often compel me to want to learn more. Why? Why did that happen? What did I learn from my mistake? When I ask those questions perhaps I’ll learn something new and unexpected along the way.
“But great grand schemes will get you grief. Take what you need, that’s all. A light craft takes the wind and skims the water lightly.”
– Yuan Mei from What I have Seen
