That’s Just the Way It Is

When I was younger, I had a step brother that would ask me what a word meant and I would get annoyed with him because I couldn’t tell him a dictionary definition. I knew the word from context, could use it correctly, but couldn’t tell him exactly what it meant. 

And that pissed me off. 

When I was a bit older, we fostered a young kid and I remember he would ask why SO MUCH. Why does this do that? Then a why to the answer. Then a why to that answer. I laugh as I write this because I watched my dad try not to blow up at his curiosity. 

When we went deep enough into the why line of questioning, it typically resulted with a final answer of, that’s just the way it is. 

I presume he had just asked why to a level that we had not and couldn’t answer anymore. 

In listening to the Founders podcast, Episode #125 on Charles Kettering, he expands on this experience with a simple line. 

There is a great difference between knowing the thing and understanding it. You can know a lot and not understand anything. 

In a world of rapid technological advancement, we don’t often take time to ask the question why? Instead, we accept things as they are, lacking a conceptual understanding of how they came to be. 

I don’t know about you, but there is absolutely 0 chance that I could rebuild a car, let alone the internet, in the event of armageddon. 

I choose a life of ignorance in most areas because I simply do not care to understand why. Afterall, it’s not a need. Whether I know how modern life came to be or not, it will continue to be. 

But in our work, our craft, should we have a deeper understanding? Does this understanding put us at a strategic advantage? To what depth should we go? At what depth of understanding have we gone too far?

Where is the perfect stopping point between ignorance and understanding so that we can know and understand—differentiating us tremendously from others?

How deep must we go to get where we want?