Knowing it all

By the time I was in my late teens and in army, I was known around my friend circles to be a walking wikipedia. It was mostly because I retained so much random trivial information across a wide range of topics that people find it rather amazing. Practically, it was useless despite the impression people get. In fact, it only undermines you if you start believing that you actually know it all just because you retained random tidbits of useless information in your mind.

So by the time I went to college, I was trying to see how that can be useful. I found knowledge around pop culture, movies and all useful socially. It helps to establish some connection but most critically, within these tidbits, you distill the zeitgeist and start to be better able to anticipate and read people better through those lenses. Scientific knowledge themselves are of practical importance but more critically, the patterns of logical deduction rooted in those knowledge is what helps us discover new connections.

And despite the fact that most of education, I went through pretty structured learning, I realised that I was actually not good at structuring the knowledge or information which I picked up tacitly. So through work, I learnt a bit more how to organise and make those information useful. The ability to aggregate seemingly useless bits of info to form a big picture becomes more critical at this stage.

Knowing, is not a switch. It is a process. One that evolves, that deepens.