Magic of Learning

I recently heard a pretty amazing quote. “What we know is a drop. What we don’t know is an ocean.” I was watching a series on Netflix called “Dark”. Not sure who to actually attribute the quote to though. The character, the writer, someone else who has said it first? Anyway, I wanted to give credit where it was due, just don’t know who it’s due to. 

Back to this quote…..when I heard this, I was struck with the trueness of this statement. While I have never really thought that I know everything (how could that possibly be anyway), this quote reminded me of how much more there is to learn and to understand and to discover. I like to think of myself as intelligent and having common sense. But there is still an unimaginable amount of information that I will never know.

I think there are things or topics that we haven’t even begun to investigate. Referring back to the ocean specifically, I remember hearing a statistic about how much of the ocean we don’t know about. I had to go back and check what that was and according to the National Ocean Service website “More than eighty percent of our ocean is unmapped, unobserved, and unexplored.” That’s a huge amount that we have no idea about! HUGE! And that’s just the ocean. There are forests, and the atmosphere, and time, and energy, and people’s minds. I could obviously go on and on, but I think you might get the point.

I feel like we have all met a person in our lifetime that “seems” to know everything. At least that’s how they act. Obviously, no one can know everything. But anytime there is a conversation about anything, they know about it and can talk about it or know a better way to do it. Well, I think we can all agree that they don’t know it all.

This isn’t really about the know-it-alls out there. It’s about the desire to know what I don’t know. To learn things I haven’t been exposed to before. To allow myself to be taught new things. How freeing it is to be exposed to a new topic and just give yourself the time to think on it. Contemplate it, discuss it, and wonder about it.

There are so many things that we might have heard of in our lifetime. Or have seen on a tv show or in a movie.  A topic that has been discussed that seems unbelievable or that at first seems to be unbelievable. But as we dig further into the topic….maybe it’s not so crazy or not unreal. Remember the whole debate on whether or not the world is round or flat? Well, you might not remember first hand, but that debate didn’t go as most people would have thought all those years ago. Time travel…..”Back to the Future” movies. The idea has come from somewhere….

So it seems plausible that the idea of what we know is a drop and what we don’t know is an ocean. Think of that the next time you fill your bathtub, or see a pool, or even notice a puddle. Think of what you know as one drop of knowledge living in that space of all that is yet to be discovered. And then think about how awesome it would be to have 2 drops of knowledge in that cavernous space.

My friends, the magic of learning and being taught is astounding and never ending. Who are we to say that something isn’t real or couldn’t be possible. Just because we can’t see something doesn’t make it fake. There is so much to know….we won’t ever know it all. But the fun comes in learning about the things that aren’t yet discovered.

So keep your thinking hats on, everyone! Embrace learning and do your best to add a couple more drops to the ocean of the undiscovered.
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~Lynn