Furthermore, drinking a decoction of the feces from a dappled horse is the way to stop the bleeding from an injury received by falling off a horse.
Hagakure
This is funny. It sounds funny to me at least. That someone so wise, would say something so wrong. Something so dumb. This comes out of the same mouth of the man that I have tried to model my life after. And he spits out this? It probably wasn’t as funny 300 years ago.
It’s a really good lesson that no matter how smart you think you are, you do not know everything. No matter how much you think you know, you have no chance of knowing everything. We could not possibly know as much as the next generation. So you couldn’t possibly be right all the time.
There is something scary about that, but also something useful.
It’s scary to think about what we are doing that is wrong. What are we doing today that will seem ridiculous and dangerous, and flat out dumb in 20 years? 50? Or 100 years? Is it putting cell phones too our heads causing brain tumors? Is it over-scheduling our kids causing them to have ADD? Is it something to do with global warming? Maybe it’s not any of those things. There is no way to know, until things are uncovered. But trust history…we are living with mistakes right now.
So I know that I am doing things today that are not smart. If I knew what they were, I would change them. I don’t. And this can be useful. Because if I am wrong about things that I don’t know about, I can allow myself to be a little more humble. A little more open to criticism. A little more open to learning, and knowledge from others. A little bit more open minded about everything. All things that help you grow.
We don’t know everything. That’s OK. In time as we grow and learn…we still won’t know everything. But we will know more.