Spend Your Knowledge

One way to affect the world is to share your knowledge and gifts with other people.

Our society places tons of value on learning. We are encouraged to read books, to learn languages, to travel and experience new things. Failing that, we are at least supposed to watch the Discovery Channel instead of MTV.

I recently finished six lengthy books on Lyndon Johnson and Richard Nixon. I certainly learned a lot about those men, and about American history in general.

Still, I often wonder what it all adds up to.

For all of our capitalistic tendencies, we tend to be suspicious of people who stockpile money just to see how much they can earn. Even if they spend all their money on lavish houses and cars, at least they spent it on creating something. They aren't just sleeping on a pile of money.

At the same time, we tend to applaud people who hoard knowledge. People who read hundreds of books or amass multiple college degrees are better looked upon than those who collect money for fun.

What good is knowledge that isn't shared or applied to make the world a better place? How is unused knowledge any different from unspent money?

I am not saying there's anything wrong with learning and experiencing. I hope to do a lot more of it in the time I have left.

But I used to think that learning was not just a means to an end, but an end in itself. I was making the world a better place by making myself a smarter person.

Now I see that learning is like money. It has to be spent on ends like contribution, teaching, and connecting if it is to have any value.

Likely, there is some value in me learning everything there is to know about Lyndon Johnson and Richard Nixon. But right now, that value is miniscule. One person among billions has been educated.

To truly make good on that learning experience, I need to share what I've learned. I can teach a class on those Presidents. I can write another book synthesizing what I know. At the very least, I can bore people to death by dropping my knowledge into conversations.

If I've learned carpentry, I need to use that skill to actually build things. If I've studied French, I need to use it to connect with French people, or to teach others to connect, or to ease diplomatic relations between our two countries.

If I travel to the Ukraine and gain a new perspective on the world, the value gained is only potential value - until I use that new perspective to educate and better the lives of myself and others. Unless I do that, my trip was only a flight of fancy, a stamp on a passport.

Finally, if I spend countless hours reading blogs and journals on the internet - to use a purely hypothetical example - I need to invest just as much time in writing my own. Even if it sucks, I need to put my own knowledge and value out into the world. That's karma and fair play, but it's also making good on all of the things I've learned.

Don't be Scrooge McDuck, keeping your knowledge hermetically sealed and swimming around in it. It goes when you go. Use it while you're here to live more effectively and to enrich the lives of other people.