Humbling

By Tommy Leung on 11/11/2010 in Life

It is incredibly humbling year after year to see how spectacularly stupid I really was the past year. Every year feels like being at the apex of knowing. As if during that year I’ve discovered the meaning to life and there’s nothing left to ponder.

And then the Earth does it’s year long dance around the Sun and I realize I am wrong again.

This isn’t very meaningful in the beginning. In the beginning, we know we know nothing. Like freshmen we accept that we’re new and know nothing. It’s when we’re sophomores and juniors that we naively think we know everything. I guess the meaning of the word sophomoric came about with good reason.

Some of us live in the sophomoric period of life longer than others. No value judgement there. But, the sooner we realize how much we don’t know, the better.

I cannot recall when or where I read a very apt quote that has stuck with me as if I’ve known it all my life. As with all quotes that have such a place in my psyche, I can never recall the exact words but, I can feel the ideas. It goes something like:

“A man who wakes up in a year with the same beliefs he had a year ago is a man who has not grown.”

I wish I could Google definite phrases and find the original quote but, I cannot. My version of this wise saying captures the gist of the meaning but, none of the elegance.

This idea and phenomenon that I’ve witnessed ever since those words went from page to eyeball to brain has acted as a sonar system to the larger body of knowledge and thought around me. With each passing year, I am floored by how many new things I learn ranging from sheer information to new skills to new perspectives. Most of which I had little idea even existed.

The most humbling part is that each passing year I accrue more knowledge and thought, the sonar continues to show an ever expanding body of knowledge and thought. The cave gets bigger and bigger as the tiny island I stand on representing what I know gets proportionally smaller.

Humbling.