Friday, January 2, 2009

There is a lot we do not know

I had to get some keys made up this afternoon. I ran over to the Hardware store. I figured I would be in and out in a jiffy. Boy, was I wrong. There was a line of people who must have had the same idea. As I talked to the salesman he told me that their busiest days are the first and fifteenth of every month. As people move in and out of apartments the landlords need new keys.

It struck me that this was a world I knew nothing about. As he told me that they do over 20,000 keys a year, I began to realize just how little I know about the every day activities in some places. We take so much for granted. We think we know about the minutia of every day life and then we meet up with someone who tells us something that we could have never guessed.

It reminded me that humility is a good trait for all of us to hold onto. We don't know it all. When we start making statements about some aspect of life that we are not familiar with, we only show how parochial our knowledge is.

I found out today that it is far better to ask questions and learn from others than it is to make like we know it all. It is a lot less embarrassing that way.

Cal