charles-chandler.org

Challenge what you hear, not to disagree, but to understand, and not out of arrogance, but out of humility. You have the right to demand understanding, and if something doesn't make sense to you, you have the right to say, "I am too stupid to understand what you just tried to explain to me. Can you please explain it to me in terms that even I can understand?" And if you still don't understand, you have the right to ask someone else. And if you still don't understand, you have the right to search the whole world for what you're missing. Just remember that sometimes, it is easier to derive understanding from what you already know. We all have more knowledge than we need, and new understanding is rarely the product of new knowledge — it's more commonly the product of a new appreciation of something that we have always known. But you must never give up trying to understand. When you understand something, you possess the object of that understanding, in a way that the legal owner might not. You know how to appreciate it, how to take care of it, how to replace it, and when to simply get out of its way. If you understand the whole world, then everything in it belongs to you. And understanding is that which one can possess, and one can share, and one can possess all the more. Physical ownership must be mutually exclusive, because each thing in this world must be the responsibility of one individual. Accountability doesn't distribute well. But the ownership of understanding is not like that. We can all appreciate everything in this world, and all the more so if we share our appreciation. If everyone thought like this, the only thing that we would not be able to understand is how anyone could have ever been any other way. The part of the world that you care to survey is yours. Go possess it in the only meaningful way possible, with your mind, at first with your humble curiosity, and then completely with your proud generosity.