we do things

Knowledge isn't a competition.

It shouldn't be.

I don't think it should be.

But it is.

Is it?

Maybe it's not a bad thing, if it is.

Can you compete for knowledge?

Everyone does it. Even in a team.

You show your worth by showing your mind.

Or your body. Your body has knowledge.

Your body usually knows how to run, walk,

Maybe play piano or basketball,

And if it can't do those things,

It knows others.

It can learn others

And it is hard to lose them.

What about your mind?

How does your mind know anything

If you swear you put the keys in your pocket this morning

But they weren't there?

Is it knowledge if it winks away like a flame

And reappears of its own will?

Is it only knowledge if it's there every step of the way,

Like your ability to walk?

Is knowledge everything you know?

What about everything you don't?

Can you measure someone's ignorance?

Can you write us all a test?

If we're hopelessly ignorant,

Can we safely say each one of us

Knows exactly the same things?

No. We are all ignorant

But especially of each other

Although that pales in comparison

To our inability to grasp

Our inability to grasp.

We do things.

Many of them hurt us.

I will talk about myself now, because I don't know who you are. I am probably not very different from you. Here is why.

I encase myself in a

We encase ourselves in a

bubble.

It has everything we need

and, coincidentally,

nothing we do.

I eat excuses for

We eat excuses for

food.

They are still food

but they are also excuses

and they aren't food.

I am a lump of a human.

I am passive,

Only pausing in my slumber

To actively pursue my ignorance.

I am a lump.

Not of coal (to ignite.

Once thriving, now dead,

Toxic when burnt,

But still lightable).

Not of gold (plentiful.

Yet overvalued, moldable,

Meltable, untarnishable).

Not of blistered skin

Or ice.

I am a lump of chemicals.

Proteins, water, hormones.

I am a lump of other things.

Thoughts, a few opinions.

Mostly blood and bones

With a sprinkling of my conscious.

Take me, compress me,

Put me in a heap.

Boil me down to crystal

And see what shape I am.

Put me in a room with everything I need to become leader of the universe.

Give me

Give us

Time.

What will happen?

Check back in two billion years

And we will be sitting in the room

Sleeping with our eyes open.

You'll tell we're asleep, even as we talk to you.

We talk in our sleep.

We walk and do everything asleep.

People sleep when they are tired,

So we must always be tired.

We tell each other about each other's mistakes

But not to fix them -- just to laugh,

To make us look better in comparison.

We stab clocks 'til they stop working

But we pretend they still do

And tell ourselves they are our emperors

When we could rule the universe if we only used what we were given.

The question is, would we want to rule the universe?

First we'd have to define

universe

which is way too hard to do.

Then we'd have to define what it means to

rule.

Compare a lollipop to a balanced meal. You could live on candy. If that's all you ever did or knew to do, you'd be malnourished. You'd be sick. You'd die too early. But that's all you'd ever know to do. If you were the only person on Earth, and you lived on lollipops from birth, you would think nothing of it.

Wouldn't you?

Why is it hard to change?

You have to do things. They take time.

In any case, you have to do things that take time.

You might as well do things that aren't bad for you.