Knowing vs Learning

I’ve been a life-long learner.

If you’ve been a reader of karenika with any regularity this won’t surprise you. Learning is one of my core values. I’m interested in just about any academic subject as well as arts, self-growth etc. In my dream world, I’d be in school for the rest of my life, taking any class that interests me and continually learning new things.

So imagine my surprise when I realized last week that much of my recent grief was coming from situations where I felt like I should know. There were situations at work, with my coaching certification, with being a mom or a wife or even a friend, where I kept judging myself for not already “knowing” the right answers. When I noticed this, I almost laughed out loud. Here I stood, a learner who kept punishing herself for not knowing and thus in her panic and frustration and shame, closing the doors to any possible learning.

I got an email this week from one of the women in one of my book clubs. She was in the middle of reading a current and popular book. She thought it was really interesting and wanted to discuss it with others. So much so that they decided to add in a new date to meet and discuss this book in a few weeks. I had a very specific bias and rant against this particular book and had already decided not to read it. So when I first got the emails, I ignored them.

As each woman in my group replied on whether or not they would attend, one of them said she wanted to come but didn’t want to read the book and would that be okay. The original girl replied with something like as with each time, you’re welcome whether you read the book or not but i will say that in my experience the discussions between those who read it and those who didn’t read it is really different. Then she linked to an article discussing why it mattered to actually read the book vs just talking about the issues in the book.

I am not sure what compelled me to click on it this morning at 4:45am but I did. And I read the whole article. As soon as I finished it, I knew I was going to read the book. Not because it was necessarily a compelling read or that I’d changed my mind about it, but because I realized that I was clearly standing in a specific perspective about the book, the author, the topic and I already had opinions on all. Reading the book from that perspective would have taught me nothing. I would likely have used it to confirm my bias and continue with my already well-developed criticisms on this topic.

Now that I read the article (and emailed back and forth with the person who sent the email) I will read this book with a completely different perspective. I am now curious and open to what I might find. Open to looking at the issue differently. Open to learning.

When I approach something with the idea that I should know it or that I already know it, there’s no room for growth or learning there. There’s only room for judging and criticizing.

For a life-long learner, that seems like a non-ideal space.

So my goal for the next few weeks is to really explore the idea of learning vs knowing. What else am I approaching in my life from the perspective of already knowing or feeling like I should know? What’s the cost of that to me? What opportunities am I giving up when I choose this perspective?

And, most significantly, how do I find my way back to choosing to learn and grow?