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Today's
quotation:
People today distinguish
between knowledge and action
and pursue them separately, believing that one must
know before one can act. . . . They say they will wait 'til
they truly know before putting their knowledge into
practice. Consequently, to the end of their lives,
they will never act and also will never know.
Wang Yang-ming
Instructions for Practical Living
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Today's
Meditation:
Sometimes
you've just got to do something. There are things
other than knowledge that help us to know when to act,
especially our instinct and our feelings. While none
of these things is an infallible guide that can lead us to
never make mistakes when acting, they all can help us to
accomplish things in our lives that would forever be left
undone if we were to wait until we had compete knowledge
about something.
Personally,
I'd rather my doctor didn't make that first incision
before she or he knew what was wrong with me. I'd
rather not read a paper by a student who did no research
on the topic. But do doctors need to know everything
possible about surgery before they remove tonsils or an
appendix? Does my student need to know everything
about France before writing a paper about Paris? Do
I need to know absolutely everything about the English
language before I start teaching it to someone who wants
to learn it?
Acting
is one of the most important elements of learning.
It's fine to gain knowledge through books and discussions,
but the knowledge that we gain from actually doing
something runs deeper and lasts longer. If we
refrain from acting, we stay just the same as we are-- we
don't grow much at all, and we can doom ourselves to
always wondering, "what if?" If we keep
telling ourselves that we'll act as soon as all the
conditions are just right, then guess what?
I
would much rather act and get things wrong than refrain
from acting just to avoid taking a risk. I know that
there are times when I'm just not ready to act, and I know
that patience is incredibly important to us, but I also
know that sometimes it's very important to take a next
step whether we feel we're completely ready or not--
sometimes we won't learn the next things we need to
learn until we have acted, until we have put ourselves out
there even if we're not completely sure of all the
variables.
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