Lost in Translation

Here’s the big secret: I don’t know a goddamned thing.

This isn’t one of those Socratic “The only thing I know is that I know nothing” bits, either. Socrates was talking about logic and reason, and never taking anything for granted – begin everything by accepting that you might be wrong, and go from there. That’s a good goal, and it’ll get you a lot farther than blind dogma, but it’s not what I’m talking about.

No, what I mean is this: I have no idea what I’m talking about. Seriously, I don’t know why you people are reading what I’m writing. I have more than a thousand people (or robots or small dogs with evolutionarily-improbable opposable thumbs) following me on Twitter, and I’m making this up as I go along. I have no business giving anybody advice or speaking on any subject, really, because life has shown me that what I’m really, truly good at is taking a good thing and screwing it up. Seriously, if I’d been born with a silver spoon in my mouth it would have been tarnished by the time the doctor slapped my ass. (Speaking of which, I managed to screw up being born – I got stuck coming out, and the doctors had to push me back in so they could do a C-section. You’d think I would have taken the object lesson more seriously.)

On the other hand -

I suspect that most people in the world feel like this.

I don’t have any proof. I sure as hell don’t know, and there’s an interesting fallacy that makes us feel like other people are like us, so maybe I’m totally wrong, but I have a suspicion that the overwhelming majority of us feel like we’re in the tall grass most of the time. We’ve got a tenuous grasp on whatever it is that we’re supposed to be good at, and we fight and struggle and kick our own asses to live up to the expectations of other people, in part because even the people who feel like they’re falling apart at the seams feel like everyone else has it together.

So maybe I’m not alone in not knowing anything.

And maybe knowing that helps.