How 'Knowing' Can Limit Us

Have you heard about what seems to have become a ‘running technique’ – Young Shuffle?

It has become a motivational story/video. I suppose it’s become tied to ‘believe it’s possible’, perseverance, etc. In fact, the video I attach to this musing starts with the very words, ‘Believe it’s possible’.

But it’s not those aspects that stand out for me in this story/video.

What stands out for me is living one’s life ‘from the bottom up’ rather than from the ‘top down.’

When we are children – before we ‘know’ stuff; before the world pushes us to assimilate and take on the ideas about the ‘right way’ as if they’re ours and as if they’re natural – we experience things directly. Well, as directly as our biology allows us. And then ask questions, entertain hypotheses. Without measuring against anything; without questioning if what we’re experiencing is ‘correct’, as in, if it’s ‘not wrong’.

Then, the more adulting we’ve done, the more of the world’s ‘knowledge’ we absorb and accept as ours, the more we lose our ability to even experience things ‘from the bottom up.’ Everything we experience gets filtered through layers of learning, intentional or not, we’ve done up to that point. Very rarely do we pause to question whether something – through which all of our later experience are/will be filtered – we learn is as universal and as true as we accept them to be.

Again, I feel compelled to resort to my go-to rhetorical question: Does fish know what water is?

*

Cliff Young did not know how to prepare for the 1983 Ultramarathon, so he turned up as he was.

Cliff didn’t know the that-day rules of running; he never read any professional marathon magazines.

Cliff was mocked by press and other runners for not knowing.

Cliff WON the ultramarathon because he didn’t know the rules. BECAUSE, for not knowing the rules set by others, he wasn’t limited by them.

From ‘bottom up.’

I invite you to watch the video. It's beautiful.