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Everyone You Will Ever Meet Knows Something You Don’t
Use every interaction as an opportunity to learn something new.
“People love to talk but hate to listen. Listening is not merely not talking, though even that is beyond most of our powers; it means taking a vigorous, human interest in what is being told us. You can listen like a blank wall or like a splendid auditorium where every sound comes back fuller and richer.” — Alice Duer Miller
I want to be honest with you. For a while, I used to think I was correct all the time and knew absolutely everything. I genuinely thought that anyone who disagreed with me was misinformed and that it was my job to help them find the truth. Put simply, I was arrogant.
It didn’t matter if it was politics, “facts” about the world, or anything else. If I thought it was true, it must have been. And although I’d like to tell you that my inflated sense of self-worth disappeared overnight, it didn’t. Instead, it took many months to realize that I wasn’t always right about everything.
So what changed? I began to realize that everyone knows something I don’t. Whether it’s engineering, science, nature, or any other subject, every person on this planet has spent time learning about something they find meaningful.
