Knowing

There is a strange confidence that arrives somewhere between twenty and thirty. It doesn’t announce itself loudly. It slips in quietly, disguised as competence. As experience. As finally knowing how things work.

By then we’ve collected enough facts, enough opinions, enough wins and losses to build a small internal narrative; I know.  And once that narrative takes hold, something subtle happens. We stop listening the way we used to.

As children, we carry a very different relationship with knowledge. A child instinctively knows that they don’t know. There is no shame in it. They ask without embarrassment. They watch without judgment. Teachers, elders, anyone slightly ahead on the path becomes a doorway into understanding. The world is vast, mysterious, and clearly bigger than them. That humility isn’t taught. It’s natural.

Then school begins to formalise learning. Knowledge becomes structured. Measured. Rewarded. Grades and Ranks arrive. Slowly, the question shifts from what am I learning ? to how well am I doing ? in some subject.  The change is drastic enough that by high school and college, we are no longer explorers. We are performers. We learn to optimise. To memorise. To pass exams. To defend our answers. To argue our points. Somewhere along the way, curiosity gives way to certainty. Not real certainty; its second-hand certainty assembled from textbooks, professors, peer groups, and whatever ideas happen to be fashionable at the time. And by twenty, many of us carry a full backpack of conclusions. Political views. Career assumptions. Ideas about success. Beliefs about relationships. Opinions about how the world works. Enough fragments to feel whole. Enough confidence to reject anything that doesn’t fit.

This is the age where disagreements feel personal. Where opposing ideas sound threatening. Where someone challenging our worldview feels like they’re challenging us. We don’t realise it, but we’ve started protecting an identity built out of acquired knowledge. It makes sense. The twenties are unstable years. You’re building a life. Finding your footing. Trying to matter. Certainty feels like solid ground. Doubt feels dangerous. So we cling, We filter information, We create bias. We gravitate toward voices that echo our own. We dismiss what doesn’t align, because we’re fragile. Our understanding of reality is still under construction, and contradictions feel like structural damage.

By the thirties, something interesting happens. For many people, the construction stops. They arrive at a version of themselves that feels “done.” Career path chosen. Beliefs stabilised. Social circles established. Mental models hardened. From here on, learning becomes incremental, cosmetic. New information is allowed in only if it fits neatly into the existing framework. Anything disruptive is quietly ignored. This is where a large percentage of adults get stuck; functionally. They become very good at what they already know. They refine skills. Accumulate experience. Repeat patterns. But they stop fundamentally updating their inner operating system. The  unfortunate part is, no one realises that the update is no longer taking place. Why ?  Life gets busy. Responsibilities pile up. Survival takes precedence. The mind becomes a tool for efficiency, not exploration.

And slowly, invisibly, openness closes. You can see it in conversations. The speed with which opinions are offered. The lack of genuine questions. The reflex to explain instead of understand. The discomfort with ambiguity. The impatience with complexity. They know enough to stop being curious. They confuse familiarity with truth. This is not stupidity. It is entropy.

Staying open requires energy. It requires vulnerability. It requires admitting that large parts of your mental map might be wrong or incomplete. For someone juggling mortgages, children, careers, and aging parents, that kind of existential maintenance feels like a luxury. So most people settle. But a smaller group doesn’t. Somewhere in their forties or fifties, something cracks. Sometimes it’s burnout. Sometimes loss. Sometimes a quiet moment at night where the old answers stop working. They realise that despite decades of experience, something essential is missing. Not knowledge. Perspective. A point of view.  They begin to sense that the certainty of their youth was built on very thin ice; it was just one point of view. A certain perspective.  They start seeing patterns instead of facts. Systems instead of events. Interconnections instead of isolated causes. They notice how much of what they “knew” was inherited rather than discovered. And then comes the strange realisation: I don’t actually know anything at all. This isn’t depressing. It’s liberating. It’s a return to childhood; with context. The same openness, now paired with lived experience. The same curiosity, now tempered by humility. This is where a different kind of learning begins. Not the accumulation of information, but the dismantling of assumptions. Not mastering subjects, but observing oneself. Not asking, what is true? but how did I come to believe this? It becomes less about answers and more about awareness. They start noticing their own reactions. Their own biases. Their emotional attachments to certain ideas. They become students of their own minds. They realise that knowledge isn’t something you possess — it’s something you continuously renegotiate.

They see how every belief is provisional. How every model is incomplete. How every explanation is just a temporary scaffold around something much larger. And paradoxically, the older they get, the lighter they feel. Because they are no longer defending a rigid identity built on knowing. They are participating in an ongoing conversation with reality. This kind of person listens differently. They hold contradictions without rushing to resolve them. They don’t need to win arguments. They ask better questions. They are comfortable saying, “I don’t know.” They become quiet observers of complexity. And perhaps most importantly, they regain wonder.

Not the naive wonder of childhood;but a deeper, steadier awe at how little we truly understand.

Time.

Consciousness.

Human behaviour.

Systems.

Belief.

Even ourselves.

They realise that the real journey was never about collecting knowledge. It was about shedding certainty. About moving from arrogance to humility. From answers to inquiry. From control to curiosity. Most people will never reach this stage. Not because they can’t ; but because it requires letting go of who they think they are. It requires stepping out of the comfortable prison of being “right.” And maybe that’s the quiet arc of a thoughtful life. You begin knowing nothing. Then you spend decades convincing yourself you know something. And if you’re lucky, truly lucky, you arrive back at not knowing.

But this time, you choose it.

C