Seeking wisdom is killing me

Much learning does not equal much understanding

There has always been a wide gape in my chest - wide and magnetic and ferocious. Always wanting to consume. Always wanting more, more, more.

Yet understanding takes a lot of work, a lot of effort, and a lot attention. Some works; books, music, art will stand before you, bare their pieces one by one under the glow of an intense bright light, and still, you might not see. As Caleb Azumah wrote in Open Water, to look and to see are different things. I mean, they work the same muscles, but still, there is a difference.

I might be wrong, but I guess the difference is an attentive capacity. To really see you must first peel your eyes, clear out your ears, and wheel your mind towards understanding. Most times, I fail at one or all three. I hear the music playing, read the words, pore over them one time, five times, a hundred times. I beg the creator and the muse to affect me with their fingerprints. I stand at the doors of understanding, willing her to open up for me but… nothing.

I stumbled upon a post during an evening scroll. At first, I was too short-spanned and impatient to go through the entire carousel of Arial-sealed tidbits of advice, but I became curious. What has the writer cooked? That we do not learn through consumption but by doing? How? What do you mean by drawing more knowledge, I starve more for wisdom?

Why would she say that much learning does not equal much understanding? Screams!

At once, like someone who has been begged to walk upon water and swim on land, I began my hard ruminations. What should I do? Do I sit on my bed, chew my nails, and pray for wisdom to land on me?

After a while it hit me, and I am glad that at least I got this one (or did I not?).

Soaking up wisdom convulsively feels, at times, like filling a cup only to leave it untouched just like the desert stories, where most die of thirst with a full bottle in their hands. It’s a strange paradox: the desire to be saturated with knowledge, yet forgetting to use it, to live it.

I’ve often felt that urge to be stinkingly educated, overflowing with facts and theories and elegant turns of thought, swollen with insight, dripping intellect like sweat in the heat of it all. Chasing knowledge in libraries and degrees, driven by a desperation for accumulation. But now, I'm beginning to understand that the knowledge I already have might be enough. Not in a final, complete sense, but enough to continue creating, which is what the writer advised. To create, not hoard. To let the stored light spill into something new.

And maybe, in doing so, I make space for a deeper attentive capacity to see, a deeper understanding - not by adding more, but by releasing what’s already within me. I don't know if this is knowledge-sharing in any formal way, but it feels like a kind of offering. A small truth let loose. And I’m glad for that. I’m glad to finally let this one out.

Till my next post,

keep unboxing.