My entire life, I have always wanted to know more. The knowledge I have has never been enough. I always used to ask my mom questions and she would constantly be telling me to “look it up.” Frankly, this was extremely annoying (I just wanted the answer!!), but it really did instil in me a strong ability to research.

I love learning. I learned as fast as possible in school and ended up sitting there, absolutely bored when my work was done. My grade 4 teacher didn’t give me anything else to do, and so my mind started to get stagnant. I began helping kids around me do their homework, and then I got in trouble for doing that which really left me with nothing to do.

I hated that, and ever since then I have known that I want to know everything. To be the smartest; to have all the knowledge; and to help others who don’t have all the information.

I have wanted to know everything my whole life…..right up until this week.
This week I read a quote from someone I know at work that really stuck with me.

“I never want to know everything.
I want to remain forever teachable to be of maximum service to those I serve.”

I love this quote so much. I realized that in my pursuit of knowledge, I have been thinking about it all wrong. I know that I can never truly know everything, and I also know that there’s always someone who knows more than I do. But for some reason it never stopped me from wanting to know everything.

But where will that lead? I don’t want to find myself on the top of the knowledge pyramid with nowhere else to go. Overall this may not seem like much of a shift in perspective. It’s very similar; I still want to learn as much as possible, but somehow it feels different. It makes me feel like I am truly learning for the good of others instead of for myself.

I have had many times in life where I felt like I was on top of the world. I knew what to do, I felt confident, I rocked it. But then I also made mistakes at the same time. Sometimes very memorable mistakes that at the time devastated me and made me feel incredibly stupid.

Somewhere, there is a middle ground. Where we remember that even when we are crushing it, we still have lots to learn, and need to remain open to learning. That’s not to take away from our successes, but just to keep us humble.

This week, I settled on a term for that middle ground, and I like it a lot.

I am proud to call myself an Accomplished Idiot.