Know It Alls

I don’t think people think they know it all. I think people forget that everything they know was learned, and that creates a false sense of knowing. They assume that if there’s something to know, that they would already know it. It’s a slight, but important, difference in perspective.

It’s hard to remember a time when we didn’t know, when we first learned something, and what that felt like. And for many of us there comes a time when we stop learning. We finish school, settle into a job, and our life becomes predictable. We’re no longer pushed to learn, and learning no longer fees necessary as a result. We feel we have everything we need to know.

But if we assume that people think they know everything, then we assume that people are know it alls, and therefore aren’t interested in learning, and are unwilling to change. But if by contrast we understand that we’re all born unknowing, that we’ve all learned everything we know, and that we can be taught, then we can assume that if we can figure out how to get through to people, they can learn, and they can change.