I’m inadequate. Yep, I know it’s hard to credit but I am.
And I’m very pleased about that.
I spent years working in a complex and intellectually demanding profession, all the time wondering when they would find me out, call my bluff, see through the thin veneer of certainty that I learnt to portray. I knew that one day my woeful, my chasm deep ignorance would surface and make itself known.
But I have an ego – let’s call him Tarquin because I see him as a primped up, know all dandy who stalks my subconscious telling me I’m better than the lot of you and I shouldn’t waste my breath trying to please or appease you. And Tarquin, if he had his way, would make me swan into meetings or social gatherings, holding forth like a latter day polymath. He knew I knew everything there was to know and that all I didn’t know wasn’t worth knowing. But Tarquin, like many a grumbling former flatmate, is constantly disappointed with me. Because I learnt not to listen to his chipping and chiselling.
I have a lot to learn. That’s the truth. So much that as I grow older it feels like I’ve pulled myself ashore on a little island of knowledge, out of an ocean of ignorance. And having regained my breath I look around and realise my little bit of dry land, my certain knowledge is tiny. Out there, across those turbulent murky seas I can see other little islands, other patches of understanding. I can vaguely make them out but, as yet I haven’t found the bridges, the causeways to link me to them. So I have to work, to build, to remain open minded. And every time I create a wonky sandbar and go across, all I see is yet another dangerous whirlpool and distant safety.
And this state of being – of grace in many ways, because now I wouldn’t have it any different – provides me with many new horizons (have I beaten this metaphor to death, do you think?).
One such has been to learn a little about autism, living with it. Up until very recently, autism happened to others, or was portrayed on TV and in films. Then I started at a youth club where one of the groups included youngsters with autism and Asperger’s. And shortly after, through the #1000 voices initiative I met Autism Mom.
One comment led to another and before you can say ‘spectrum’ we met in the flesh, when she and her family travelled to London on a long planned vacation. And she asked me to write a guest blog about what I learnt. So I did.
And it’s here.
TanGental 
We all have suffering egos, but yours is downright entertaining! Nice lead into your guest blog (I’m headed there next). I learned about Autism and its spectrum through the organic co-op where I worked. Many parents, like Autism Mom, are advocates for others. It’s a loving, supportive community. How wonderful that you met a fellow blogger and her family!
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Thanks Charli, as ever for reading and making the time to comment
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Superb article, Geoffle.
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Praise indeed from the high priestess of good prose!
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Okay… that has redecorated the PC screen with coffee 😉
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Oh dear. Better than pineapple, though that is another story.
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*puts kettle on and pulls up chair….*
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Absolutely
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🙂
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Absolutely
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To be constantly learning is fun, think how boring it would be to be like Benjamin Jowett, of whom it was said;
In come I, my name is Jowett
There’s no knowledge that I don’t know it.
I am the Master of this College,
And what I don’t know isn’t knowledge.
Better to be like Kipling;
I have six honest serving men.
Who’ve taught me all I know,
Their names are What, and Why and When,
And Where and Who and How.
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Yep I’ll kipple as usual by preference
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Great post Geoff and I’ll have to head off to your guest post. My husband have joked about how our son is “often wrong but never in doubt”, which seems to be quite typical of his age group. What we have also found is the more you know, the more you appreciate how little you actually know. My husband is something of an IT network guru but he never calls himself a guru because he realises he still has so much to learn. Our poor beach is plagued by dogwalking erosion experts while the trained engineers from a number of different areas of council are undecided and assessing currents, the beach…a multitude of interactive factors, which are really veryt complex.
I don’t know if you have ever seen a square with 4 boxes with what you know you know, what you know you don’t know, what you don’t know you know and what you don’t know you don’t know. That last box is the most dangerous or problematic but also the greatest opportunity for growth.
In terms of intelligence, I’ve actually switched my thinking. I am now thinking that it’s more about asking questions than what we know and that pursuit of knowledge is what creates our greatest thinkers. This actually turns the whole stereotype of the intellectual know-it-all on it’s head and involves more of a thirst for knowledge, the quest, experimentation.
I have noticed my daughter at age 9 asks questions I’ve never even considered. At age 3 or 4, she asked me how the leaves fall from the tree in Autumn not why. She said later that she already knew why. How is due to the release of a hormone by the tree which in effect snips off the leaves. I never knew.
xx Rowena
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Hmm, you have made me think about those children questions. They are brilliant in coming at things from a different angle. Even the time, when my wife explained the facts of life to our son ( I know, I know, my job, but hey, it was the right moment). He paused and then asked, ‘But mum, doesn’t it tickle?’ As for the boxes, yes I have heard of that but it always brings to mind Rumsfeld and his known unknowns nonsense so I block it out. Ugh! Thanks for the comment. Time to go and learn more.
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It’s a never-ending process, isn’t it but at least we’re trying!
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What a lovely day and how lucky that the universe brought you all together….
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Indeed, it was a most excellent time
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Sounds like a very good day was had. Interesting to read your point of view in this!
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Absolutely
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In case anyone who doesn’t already know was wondering: Geoff is as interesting and fun in person as he is in his blog. He was an intelligent, charming, funny, interesting tour guide and companion, and we are very grateful that we got to meet him and spend a lovely day with him. Definitely one of the highlights of our trip! 😀
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