There's no shame in admitting you don't know. The real shame is pretending you do. A friend of mine posted this thought on Facebook this morning. How true it is, and how often we do it. Assuming we know is also a bad way to go. There's no substitute for really knowing something. Everything else is an imposter.

One feature I love about my Kindle is the ability to look up the meaning of a word, right there on the spot before continuing on with the book. Knowing is growing. I think that being ok with not knowing, when we have the opportunity to know, is to stop growing our mind. Where has our curiosity gone? Have we decided that we know enough?

The Kindle is just a mini-example of the world we live in. The more we know, the better we are equipped to think, reason, create, solve, contribute, fix, invent, and adapt. Ask questions. Hunger for knowledge. Long to understand. Align yourself with people that know. Be inquisitive. Get to the bottom of things. Look a couple of layers deeper. Get out and experience the world.

The truest form of knowledge comes from experiencing things. To touch, smell, taste, hear, and see with your own senses is to know. Everything else is a certain degree of belief or faith. If someone tells you that there are mountains in Montana, you likely internalize that as the truth. However, if you have never been to Montana, to see, climb, and enjoy those mountains, then you are actually believing or having faith that there are mountains in Montana. I would argue that you can't actually know unless you have been there yourself.

Nothing wrong with believing or having faith in things, we don't have enough time to get out and experience everything. However, we do need to be aware of the difference between belief or faith, and true knowledge. Most wars have been started because people had mistaken one for the other.

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