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You don’t know what you don’t know

Last few days, I have been involved in talking to some close friends about problems they have been facing lately. I have essentially not done anything to help them but just heard them out. 

It is amazing how just hearing others talk about problems and issues, can make you learn so much more about life, people and different perspectives everyone has towards the same set of facts. I learnt that many times when we think we are in a problem, we tend to become extremely judgmental. We tend to assign blame on someone or something, so that we can rest assured that the problem did not start because of us. I find this behavior very paradoxical because –

1. If the problem is not created by us, then we have no way solving it. So essentially by blaming someone else for the problem, we are accepting that it cannot be solved by us. This attitude works well for problems like – Inflation, Wars, Global warming, etc. but not for our personal relationships, jobs, health, etc. In fact, many can argue that the first set of problems are also in our control and we should actively participate in controlling them.

2. We seem to know so much about how others can make mistakes but so less about how we ourselves make mistakes. We know exactly why someone deliberately tried to harm/hurt/deceive us but we never stop to think, why would someone want to harm us in the first place. I find it very odd to imagine that someone would dedicate their life to make someone else’s life miserable. I am sure everyone has better goals to be achieved in their own life.

I am still confused why we humans always have to judge people and classify them as good or bad, clever or foolish, beautiful or ugly, hard working or lazy and so on. After all, how much do we know about anyone to be able to judge them? Then again, what does it give us by mentally classifying anyone? If anything, we lose the opportunity to learn about them more, once we have stowed them away in a labelled shelf in the racks of our mind. 

I hope the next time we are trying to judge a person, we remind ourselves that we don’t know what we don’t know and give a little more benefit of doubt. After all isn’t everyone supposed to be innocent unless proven guilty. 

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I am an ex-Management Consultant and a successful entrepreneur having close to twenty years of corporate experience. I am currently focusing full time on being a homeschooling parent while researching on the future of education and alternate methods of education. I am also a Vedic Math Trainer, an Operations Manager at a business run by her children and a philanthropist working with tens of other under privileged children. I bring all my past and current experiences together in the form of writing blogs. Using these blogs I wish to create awareness in parents, caregivers and educators about parenting, education and holistic living.