Cognizant

In the television show Fortysomething, Hugh Laurie’s character, Dr. Paul Slippery, says something in the last episode that I have found poignant since the first time I heard it. He said:

“When you’re young, you just don’t know what it is that you’ve got. And there’s no reason why you should know. Part of the point of being young, really, is not knowing. Life gets around to you soon enough.”

Sometimes, I think about what that means. It can mean a few things, generally, but applicably, there are many interpretations. One thing I understand it to apply to is freedom. That’s the biggie. People are born free. It really is true that any path is available to anyone. All the way into your late teens or early twenties, you still have that freedom. You may not think so because of things other people tell you or what you tell yourself, but you are still free. The freedom doesn’t start to fade until you’ve made enough choices for yourself, when you’ve dug a deep enough hole for yourself. You make decisions on what to study, where to work, where to live, what to buy, how to buy, who to trust, and what to do with the rest of your life. That last one is the trick. The freedom killer. We all make that choice and some of us make it every day. That decision affects everything else we do and think, guides us on one path, and chains us to one life. Sometimes our choices work out well and sometimes they turn out to be the last thing you should have done.
Through experience, we begin to close ourselves off to whatever we perceive to dislike and anything that harms us. That limits our options. It limits our freedom, freedom that we never knew we had until it had suddenly gone. “You don’t know what it is that you’ve got.” We don’t know because we take the life we’ve had from birth for granted. But this isn’t a bad thing. If we didn’t walk around for the first twenty years thinking that we were supermen or superwomen, or both in some cases, the human race wouldn’t be what it is today. Let me qualify that. The world as we know it would not exist.

“There’s no reason why you should know. Part of the point of being young, really, is not knowing.”

It’s not just freedom, but energy that you lose. There is a point in everyone’s life, unless you’ve died young (which may not be the most tragic thing in the world), when you are done growing. That boundless energy is still a part of you though, and this stage is called your ‘prime’. Not long after that, actually even during that, your cells start to break down like never before. That’s when you start dying. We’re all dying, but how can someone in their youth truly grasp that? They can’t. Until you have felt it, until you have begun your slow march to death, you can’t possibly understand the depth of the meaning of Slippery’s words.

So, it comes to this question: Is not knowing better than knowing?

Yes or no, either answer could be right. Maybe it depends on your beliefs, or stoicism. Even with certain beliefs, there are plenty of other reasons someone would choose one or the other. Believing in God(s), or not. Being happy with your life, or not. The choices, rationalizations, digressions; anything, or not. Given the freedom to choose, what would your answer be?

“Life gets around to you soon enough.”