a short note on the impossibility of knowing

I'm not sure if it's the experience of living in another country or it being that I'm in Oxford that has led me towards great introspection, but either way I keep finding myself constantly in thought. There's so much to learn.

I had a teacher in eighth grade who would walk into our classroom every morning, slam the tip of his chalk against the chalkboard, while exclaiming "you know this much . " I never really knew what he meant by that until now. It crossed my mind the other day while sitting in the Bodleian Library, surrounded by 117 miles of books (it grows by 3 miles each year), that depending on how hard he hit the board on any given day and the size of the miniscule mark that that chalk made, I think that some days Mr. Marcus was being overly generous when displaying to us how much we knew. I know not much, but I'm finding that just when I think I have finally pinned something down, it unravels in a whole new light. Its just as the saying goes, "all that I know for sure is that I know nothing for sure," which, I would normally say is absolutely true, however I believe in universal truths aside from just that single ones existence. Despite the revelation and possibility of knowing nothing for sure, however, I have been trying to pin something, anything stable, down these days while experiencing so many new things. Here's what I've got:

I think that it is undoubtedly within our very nature as beings to enjoy the comforts of stability, while consequentially rejecting the discomfort instilled within us by experiencing too much new.

What I have come to realize about this, though, is that the novelty in the things that we deem as being new is that it will inevitably become replaced by a newer new. It will become old. It will become comfortable.

((I'm finding comfort in this revelation in fact!))

Also, "you know this much . " never meant that we know nothing, it just means that we have a hell of a lot left to learn, about our surroundings, about the world, about other people (even those who we think that we have pinned down), and the most difficult to know of all, ourselves.

For my concluding thought, I'd like to state that this was the same teacher who told me that he didn't think I should participate in the Model United Nations debate team (which has students represent different countries while debating international policies and practices) because he was not sure if it was something that I could handle. After becoming a head delegate in high school leading debates at NYU and Harvard (I know I'm such a nerd), Now here I sit at Oxford University studying international politics with the greatest minds in the world. So, here's to you Mr. Marcus, while I have learned to appreciate your wisdom more so now than ever, I'd like to end this introspection by stating, "you know this much . " and, I could not have gotten here without having crossed paths with people like you. There's so much to learn.

Learn from someone every day.

as a post script; a year ago today I was at the Biden Home State Inaugural Ball in DC! As Dr. Suess stated so perfectly "Oh, the places you'll go!" Life and the people in my life have brought me to quite fantastic places!... Now back to studying the world!