I Am Not Young Enough to Know Everything

As a young child I suffered from blind devotion. I accepted words as truth without requiring proof. I never asked why. I knew that the sky was blue and that birds flew; never once asking why. Oscar Wilde once eloquently stated, “I am not young enough to know everything.” Now I know the reason the sky is blue because of wave lengths being scattered, blue being the shortest wavelength, making it the easiest to see.

When young, a person thinks they know everything. It is only with maturity that you realize how little you really know. As you age, answers become less clear. Life becomes less black and white. Right and wrong become skewed. The more educated a person becomes the more questions they ask. After a while for every answer obtained two more questions appear. Teenagers and young adults can tend to have large egos. It is with age and hardship that a person becomes humble and open to new ideas. It is said that a gentle stream will turn a boulder into sand with enough persistence. Now imagine that each one of those grains is a piece of knowledge. As a boulder, the knowledge has no ability to be sifted or shaped into a new idea. Once the boulder is broken down each grain can move freely and form ideas that weren’t able to come into fruition as the previous state. Information can be made into castles in the mind.