I was just talking to one of my staff a few days ago, and she was telling me she feels sad about a lack of knowledge. It’s not exactly that she doesn’t know anything. It’s more like this, when people from the mainstream ask about any general knowledge topic, she feels ashamed to say, “I don’t know.” She thinks she looks like an idiot in front of others.
For example, if someone asks, “Do you know chess?” or asks about something like the India Pakistan World Cup, or even the current petrol price, she feels embarrassed to admit she doesn’t know.
Often, many of us feel awkward saying, “I have no knowledge about certain things.” It’s like a lack of knowledge is considered a crime, but it’s not. In fact, saying “no idea” when someone asks about something is not a bad thing. But most people treat it like a crime.
I do agree that we must gain knowledge for sustaining ourselves and for necessary purposes, but not everything. A simple example : we give so much importance to education. Some parents even force their kids to study. Some don’t give food if the child doesn’t study. But how useful is it after the studies? In 95% of cases, I can say people study something and then do something else after education, with no link to their studies.
But no one seems to care. Still, they do the same thing with their kids, without learning from experience.
In my case, I remember many things, but not everything registers in my mind because I naturally feel what is necessary to keep. It’s not on purpose; it just happens. For example, I love driving. Since childhood, it has been my only passion, from cycles to bikes to cars. But I really don’t know the mechanisms of a car. I think technical matters are not “my cup of tea.” So I still don’t know how to change a tyre if a vehicle gets punctured.
Yesterday, I had a really bad experience where I got stuck in a forest for more than 30 minutes. Luckily, some good souls helped me change the spare tyre, and later others supported me in fixing the normal tyre. I continued my journey after two hours. In that situation, if I had known how to change the tyre, it might have helped, but I didn’t suffer much. Even though I don’t know that, I still don’t feel ashamed.
I believe knowledge is not everything, and there’s no need to “die” for it. Necessary things will be learned automatically. If we don’t know something, it might mean it’s not truly important. But if something is really needed in our day to day life, then we must learn it.
In today’s tech era, we have access to a lot of knowledge, and we feel proud of it. Most of it we gain through social media. This is definitely useful, and people do need it, but we rush to learn it. Today, kids are not aware of necessary knowledge. For example, many kids don’t know where milk and rice come from. If the maid is on leave, many would struggle to manage basic things. This is our knowledge.
I feel proud that I have no knowledge about many things. It helps me take support from others. At the same time, I feel good that I’m not dependent on anyone much for my routine.
Good