"The more you learn..."

The saying goes, "The more you learn, the less you know." But from my Old Colony Mennonite heritage, the saying is a bit different, "The more you learn, the more you're wrong." This saying, in itself, has a few different meanings. One is that, the more you expose yourself to knowledge the more responsible you are for that knowledge. From ultra orthodox Mennonite colonies in Latin America, I have heard stories of women running from the room if someone started to read the Bible. One woman told me that her mother would chastise her husband if he took out his Bible to read it, "Put that book away!"

I never grew up part of the Old Colony, but it's funny how a generational way of thinking snuck in to my consciousness. Paradigm shifts are not easy. No Staples big red button here. Gaining knowledge that contradicted what I had been taught cause inner turmoil and struggle as the tectonic plates beneath me shifted. I remember at times thinking, "I wish my parents would have stayed in Mexico. Then I wouldn't have to make all these decisions about what to think and how to live my life. I would just be married and have 5 kids. End of story." I really don't wish that. And I really didn't mean it even at that time. I was simply feeling the burden of the responsibility that came with knowing more. Still in binary-thinking mode, I was distraught at having been wrong. The more I learned, the more I had to own up to having been wrong.

For someone with my personality type which includes being hyper-responsible, I did feel the burden of knowing and having to struggle through unknowing and re-knowing. Being perfectionistic is another of the traits of my personality type which meant that I had an insatiable desire to know the truth, to know what was right. I didn't want to be wrong.

I bit into the sour apple of the knowledge of good and evil when it would have been easier to remain ignorant of the sweetness of its aftertaste.