Forever Ignorant

This is a serious question. Do you think you would be happy if you knew everything you wanted to know as it pertains to your life?

Think about it for a minute. What I mean by "as it pertains to your life" is confining your knowledge to your areas of interest as opposed to, let's say, the total weight of Assam tea exported from India. In my case you would have things like:

* children's health
* home improvement/expansion
* all-knowing cook
* fluent in Mandarin
* nutrition expert
* bike training expert
* programming guru
* and so on, the list is endless

The idea being, what if you never needed to figure something out, that you just knew it all, all the time. Would that be good or bad?

My initial reaction is that it would suck. It would take so much of the sense of discovery away that you would lose a lot of what is interesting in life. If I knew before a race exactly what my time was going to be, would that be any fun? Would work be challenging enough to keep me interested?

Conversely, I also wonder if you took out the difficulties you could enjoy things more. Would I be able to focus more on music, books, and movies for enjoyment? Would I be able to get more out of my bike rides because I would know exactly how my body reacts and what my limits are? Would I be able to enjoy my food more knowing exactly how to make a perfect meal that is very healthy for me?

I think both sides have merit, and obviously this is mental masturbation but interesting nonetheless. How does this pertain to my life?

This morning I woke up and got on the bike before work, doing an interval set of really high-end stuff. It was a decent ride, somewhere between fair and good. But now sitting on the train I feel amazingly good. My legs were stiff before the ride, now they feel fresh and loose. Generally after hard efforts my legs hurt. Right now, I feel like I could go out and ride for 3 hours, no problem.

My point is that after all this time there is still so much I'm clueless about. How could I know that I would feel better today after the ride? Where does this come from?

I think I prefer the eternal ignorance side of the fence. No matter how much you learn, you continue to refine what you think you know and learn more. The sense of exploration is always there, there are always doors to open that you didn't even know about the previous day.

Besides, if I knew everything I would have this blog to entertain you guys with. Isn't a blog the ultimate admission that you don't really know what the hell is going on?