We know too much but understand too little!

Information is the new currency. It is what we know that we offer to the table and get our piece of pie.

Seems like life revolves around the information spectrum: “knowing this here and tell it there”. That is why we are so obsessed with possessing different skills and perfecting what we know by looking for more knowledge.

Our brain helps very much during the process of acquiring knowledge about different things. However, the brain itself does not know what to do with what you give it to store or process unless you connect the dots of what you absorb daily.

Highlight this “Knowing and understanding are slightly two different things”.

You can consider knowledge towards something like a surface-level grade and understanding as a depth-level grade.

The desire of understanding something costs much than just simply knowing the subject matter.

The approach to know something is in an orderly manner, however an approach to understand tends to be drawn from different perspectives.

It is through understanding where we get to see the patterns between what we know.

Consider pieces of information as small dots on a white paper then draw small lines connecting one dot to another.

If those dots represent any concept or situation in real life, it can indicate that information about the current situation can be there but doesn’t guarantee that you understand the situation unless dots are connected by the lines.

It is when we connect what we already know that we get to understand the situation.

Thus, it does not really matter how many things you know but how much you understand.

For example, there are so many people out there who are very good at the idea of “saving for the future, they understand the value of a coin” not because they have read many books or taught about financial literacy but because they understand the little, they know.

Now, if you look carefully, you can see that what you may need is not to keep absorbing information, but to chew well what you already have in the tank.

Chewing the knowledge is to process the information a little long, it is to try to figure out the patterns between what you know.

I agree that some type of information feels useless at some point, but you will be surprised by what you already know and didn’t understand.

Consider this example, a quote by someone is sometimes a personal experience summed up in a single sentence.

Depending on your level of understanding you can easily grasp what is being talked about when reading the quote or you can understand it due to the similar experience you are sharing with the author at the moment. But mindless browsing of knowing many of them doesn't really do the work.

What I want to refer to is that knowing is a fast lane while understanding is a big slow lane. People don’t move fast there.

You can browse through different quotes and yes, you will know things but understanding them is something else.

That’s why on some special occasions same quotes hit differently.

This doesn’t only apply to the quotes but also to everything we read such as books, articles, hear and see.

Note the distinction between the two, knowing and understanding. Knowing is simply a smart way of storing things in the brain and is static. Understanding is active and a big picture of what we know.

Knowing different names of a bird in many languages does not prove that you understand anything about a bird. Do not be obsessed to know much, often what we know is old and information changes frequently.

In some aspects, fear is relatively proportional to the knowledge we acquire because you cannot fear what you do not know. However, understanding drives out fear; we only fear what we don’t understand.

Last but not least, do not fear the big academic words; often you don’t need to memorize them but to grasp what there are carrying behind.

Remember what Einstein replied when he was asked about the speed of sound, he said that “I don’t know. I don’t burden my memory with such facts that I can easily find in any textbook”.

Be obsessed with understanding. Understanding induces a lifestyle, understanding changes habits, understanding brings peace, understanding fights the ego.

It is the possessing of some level of understanding that helps us to live in the ‘now’, present.

Understanding helps us to filter the past from the present, to let go of heavy burdens we always carry which are unnecessary. It is understanding which helps one to convey one knowledge into another not knowledge itself.

Thank you for reading,

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Written by Fred Mugisha.