The building was no more than three thousand square feet, both floors combined. Yet, each time she stepped into the library, my seven-year-old self was instantaneously overjoyed. The smell of books sent me into a kind of delirium, and for two hours each day, I immersed myself in the sentences stretching across each page. "How many pages would amount to how many miles of words?" I wondered. I planned to amass "a hundred bajillion miles" of knowledge. I strategized to read every book in the library, systematically going down the Dewey system. This was easily done with the bitty chapter books. The nonfiction proved to be a roadblock. Sliding my fingers against the satiny, gilded edges of the encyclopedias, I reveled in the idea that out there was a reserve of knowledge, more vast than my mind could ever comprehend.
At seventeen, I have still not learned everything there is to know in the universe, nor do I ever expect to. But I know I will always be learning, when I am twenty, forty, and ninety. As my knowledge expands, my questions, too, will accumulate. And thus, the paradox explained by David Byrne: "The more you know, the more you know you don't know." The lens through which I view the world will undoubtedly be widened by each gem, each piece of knowledge, I gain. But I fully expect that I will never know all that I don't know.
I hope the sentence fragment in the last paragraph is okay. Any thoughts are appreciated!
At seventeen, I have still not learned everything there is to know in the universe, nor do I ever expect to. But I know I will always be learning, when I am twenty, forty, and ninety. As my knowledge expands, my questions, too, will accumulate. And thus, the paradox explained by David Byrne: "The more you know, the more you know you don't know." The lens through which I view the world will undoubtedly be widened by each gem, each piece of knowledge, I gain. But I fully expect that I will never know all that I don't know.
I hope the sentence fragment in the last paragraph is okay. Any thoughts are appreciated!