Knowing Really Well
One day over group lunch, my coworker told us an amusing story with his kid. He was barbecuing with his six-year-old son outside, and saw his son reaching towards the crackling flame. The kid was evidently entranced by how pretty the fire looked. My coworker admonished: “don't do that! You'll get hurt by the fire!”, and his son looked at him and nodded knowingly. All the while, his finger was still inching closer to the red-hot flame.
I found this story really memorable because it reminded me of all the times when I knew something to be true, yet went against it anyways. It seems like for me, there's a strong difference between knowing something to be true and really knowing something to be true. It doesn't have to be experiential to feel really true (i.e. I don't have to eat a ghost pepper to know that it would be really bad idea), but there's nevertheless some confidence level that have to build up for something to feel really true.
The sensitivity to distinguish between knowing and really knowing seems important to me. With respect to the current vaccination situation, there are a decent amount of people out there who knows that it's a good thing to do, yet still sways with “oh... I'm not sure, something's weird. Maybe I'll wait.” Knowing that it's a sign of uncertainty that requires additional investigation to resolve seems like a pretty important trait.
On the other hand, I've also been in situations where I laid out a hundred ironclad reasons to do something, yet my emotions still go “down with the system!!”. How to resolve these? I'm not sure if I really know...
Anyways, to finish the story that started all this, my coworker's son got a tiny scorch and pulled away from the fire. I bet he'll know not to touch the fire next time.
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Categorized under: #psychology