I Don’t Know Anything

Recently, I saw the documentary Crawford on Hulu, and one of the older folks interviewed mentioned how young people think they know everything but they don’t. While I agree with him, I wanted to ask what old people now know but didn’t before. Every time an older person informs me of my ignorance, he/she never really elaborates. What don’t I know? Do you care to give me your advice about life?

What don’t I know? This is sort of like the last question posed at the second 2008 presidential debate a few days ago. The moderator asked the candidates a “zen-like” Internet-submitted question: “What don’t you know, and how will you learn it?” What the candidates said was not important, since neither of them really answered the question, nor did they attempt to give a zen-like response. But how are we expected to realize what we don’t know when we don’t know what we don’t know? It’s sort of like when a teenager or a young adult looks for his/her first job, but is frustrated when it seems like every job requires work experience, which can only be acquired through having had a job.

In any case, I’ve concluded that “I don’t know anything,” although that is a very generalized statement, so I’ll make a slight exception: I know a little more than the people younger than I. I am privileged that, simply because I’ve been on Earth longer than they, just like older people have than I.

Okay, so I don’t know much. But I do know some. I have an idea of what I want, at least for the moment. I partly know who I really am and how I really am. I have a general idea of how people are; there is a spectrum of personalities and attitudes and perspectives that I’ve collected from the people I’ve met and observed in my life. I haven’t met every kind of person in the world, so I don’t know how accurate my spectrum is in relation to the big picture.

But at the same time, neither do old people. They can’t possibly know everything there is to know, and they’ll probably admit that. They would say that at such an old age, they’re still learning. So I guess that’s the point: live and learn. I may not know everything, nor do I know a lot, but I am always learning, and I’m eager to learn. Sometimes I might not like what I’ve learned, but I still learned what I don’t like to learn.

Flush.