I’ve had friends learning a second language, and I'll ask them how much they know. They'll answer, “Oh I’m not fluent. But I can understand a lot more than I can speak.”

Well... I mean obviously, right? You’re not going to speak words you don’t know. You can’t... Because you don’t know them.

In a similar way that we can’t say things we don’t understand, we have messages we’re unable to hear too.

I’m not saying this literally, but in a more abstract sense.

That you’re unable to hear the messages that are most desperately needing to reach you. The world is constantly and urgently trying to tell you things you need to hear, but that’s the problem, you’re unable to access them. It's the inability to hear them and having those lessons just out of reach that place value in them.

And it’s ironic. It’s ironic how the things we are aware of seem so clearly communicated to us, while our most desperate cries from the universe are unable to be communicated to us.

It almost feels as if tuned into the wrong frequency, there are some things needing to be revealed that we simply cannot access.

But I think that’s also kind of the point.

“We don’t know how much we don’t know.”

It seems like a blatantly obvious concept, sure, but it petrifies me. It’s terrifying, but it’s exactly the point. It’s potential for growth, and the demand of it.

It’s what equates life to one large lesson. We'll pitifully chase the things we'll never reach.

And admittedly at times it will leave a constant ringing of ignorance in your ears.

I must seem so ignorant to people all the time... How will I ever know what I'm missing?

It’s like I’m speaking my own language, but outside sources are the only ones capable of seeing the gaps in my knowledge.

The simply stated idea of “You don’t know what you don’t know” seems straightforward and blatantly obvious but I hope it wakes you up. I hope it ignites your desire to learn, and I hope it makes you just uncomfortable enough that you feel a constant crave to learn and relentlessly pursue the truth.

We can only live by the philosophies that we understand.

But we’ll grow by being surrounded the things that we don’t.