Knowledge Is Knowing That A Tomato Is A Fruit. Wisdom Is Knowing Not To Put It In A Fruit Salad

Things Are About To Weird

Tomato is a fruit — we all know that. 

But put a tomato in a fruit salad and that’s just weird. 

If someone served me a fruit salad with a tomato in it (unless they were Yotam Ottolenghi) I would scrunch up my face in confusion and leave the spoon exactly where it was. 

There are some things that we don’t need to try again to know that they don’t work, our ancestors have done that leg work for us. We know when some things work, and when they don’t, like putting tomatoes in a fruit salad for instance. 

Before I go any further, however, know that if you do actually do this, you are weird, but that’s okay, because weird people often find each other and they join in mutual weirdness and often call it love. 

So, don’t worry, weird is good. But weirdness isn’t always a reliable source for knowledge, and certainly not wisdom. 

Knowledge, by its very nature, changes over time. Science knows this best. Science, after all, means knowledge in Latin. That’s in roots. 

There are some things, however, that seems to remain true, and those truths often lead to wisdom. Like gravity for example. I know that if I jump off a tall building I will fall, and it will hurt. I might even break something. 

Wisdom tells me that I can’t fly, not in this human body anyway. 

Anyone can gain knowledge. There’s enough information to read and then regurgitate as truth, especially at the moment. All someone has to do to seem knowledgeable is to remember enough of that information and speak it back to someone else. That’s pretty much what schools teach. A group of people got together once (called a board) and made a curriculum, and then millions and millions of people have tried to pass those exams ever since to impress that board. And that, nowadays, is considered ‘knowledge’. 

Knowledge vs Knowing 

To simply say we know is only a fraction of the picture, especially when we consider that the human instruments we use to make sense of this world can only pick up a small fraction of the knowing all around. 

Knowledge, then, is filtered through our human instruments (eyes, ears, nose, mouth, skin) for us to understand it. Knowing/wisdom is often something less tangible. It’s often felt throughout the body as a feeling, an impulse, or intuition. That’s a lot harder to measure, and a lot easier to disregard. 

Knowledge tells us that other beings here experience life a lot differently from us. And in that, knowledge leans on the knowing that we can’t fully understand the full spectrum of life. 

Enter The Mystical 

By accepting that we simply don’t know, or at least know only a tiny fraction of what is actually going on here, we can marvel at the magic and mysticism that surrounds us every day. 

A bat sees infrared. An eagle has a lead deficiency in its beak to let it know whether or not it’s on or off track. Whales (for reasons still unknown) leap out of the ocean in what appears to be an expression of joy. Other planetary life lives deep on the ocean floor without light (somehow). Crystals form over millions of years. Seeds grow into enormous trees and create hundreds if not thousands of other seeds that can all do the same. The naked mole-rat lives underground without much oxygen and because of it seems to resist viruses. And we whizz around space on this inordinately complex being with a heart of fire at speeds hard to comprehend, forever and ever and ever.

Knowledge confirms this to be true but why it’s true and, more amazingly, how it’s possible is what causes us to question, search, wonder and marvel at it all as we move through generations on this one planet we all call home. 

For things to have ever become ‘true’ there must have been an experiemental period of time testing all the ways that didn't work, to finally figure out a way that did. After all it took Thomas Edison failing 999 times in his quest to make a lightbulb before he could ever say ‘aha, now there is light.’

I still don’t think putting a tomato in a fruit salad will ever taste good, even after the one thousandth time of trying, but you never know, and I’m open to being wrong (kind of).

Wisdom is a wonderful thing, and so is knowledge. Dancing between the two is what keeps us moving forward.

So we have to experiment, we have to be a little crazy, think outside the box, create, imagine, try, try, try, fail (a lot) and learn.

What inspires you to keep learning? 

Things didn’t get so weird after all, right?