Human Soup

I’m not all that into knowledge. I don’t retain information very well. I’ve actually googled the symptoms of early onset dementia because I have so much trouble retaining words, facts, names of movies, people, and sometimes basic objects. (Don’t worry, I think I’m probably ok).  I’m always envious of people that can synthesize information in words, remember the name of that guy who said the thing, and connect it to another person who said a thing that is connected but also different. This is not the way my brain works. I can see it, they are connected in front of me. I can reach up and grab ideas and watch them grow and turn and morph into something new, but bless you if you’re willing to listen to me try to describe them to you. 

I imagine I’m frustrating to live with. I do a lot of pantomimes, arm-waving, and word association to make my point. What’s my point? I’m so glad you asked. I would by no means consider myself full of wisdom, but I do think and make decisions in life through feelings, pictures, and experiences, much more than knowledge (logic, ‘facts’, data). This is all much to the dismay of my husband. If you tell me what will happen if I do a thing, and it won’t be great, I will probably do it anyway. Because… hey, maybe it won’t be bad. And even if it is, maybe something good will come from it. Or I’ll learn something, or I’ll meet someone. I’ll rarely let knowledge override my gut, even when there is a lot of knowledge that says I should do otherwise. 

A small but recent example was a juice cleanse I decided to do after a couple of weeks of eating peanut butter cups like they were about to be wiped from the face of the earth. I know, logically, that it’s just drinking sugar water without fiber and has no real health benefits, and probably won’t lead to healthy weight loss. But I did it anyway because I was curious. Also because peanut butter cups. And it was awesome. I did not lose weight, but I also didn’t eat any peanut butter cups, and I unexpectedly got off caffeine and realized that overnight caffeine withdrawal was why I couldn’t wake up in the morning. I have been waking up at 6 am without an alarm now and feeling amazing. (Those of you that have experienced my caffeine consumption could probably have told me that, but I would not have listened… I had to figure it out myself). 

The world runs on knowledge, and I’ve spent a long time thinking I was just really dumb. But there are all different kinds of ‘knowing,’ and I’m finally starting to trust my ways and not let the intellectual knowledge get in the way of the experiential kind.