Knowing Without Really Knowing

Mon, 28 Feb 2011 12:00:00 -0500
personal-stories, things-i-didnt-know

Near the end of my second year in graduate school, I spent a sunny afternoon in Boston at the city’s Earth Day celebration. I bought something to eat from a street vendor: maybe a gyro sandwich or funnel cake. Whatever it was, it made me feel bloated and disgusting. I had been thinking for a while that it was time to try to lose some of the weight I had put on over the previous few years, but had never mustered enough motivation to get started. That day I resolved to make some changes that would take off a few pounds and help me feel healthier.

I did a little reading about nutrition and learned a few new things, but mainly confirmed what I’d been hearing but ignoring for years. Immediately I stopped eating some of the most damaging staples of my diet: the empty calories, fried foods and fatty meats. And within four or five months, without making a huge effort, I lost nearly 30 pounds and felt a thousand times better.

What shocked me most about my physical transformation was that it proved that what I ate actually did affect my health. It was a truth that I had “known” without really knowing at all. It was as though the information had been stored in an external hard drive that had never been plugged into a PC. Only life experience, and reflection on the meaning of that experience, made the connection possible for me. I’ve been paying attention to my food choices ever since.

I think a lot of what each of us “knows” is like my pre-Earth Day knowledge of nutrition. We have the data but not the connection; we know without really knowing. I see evidence of this around campus all the time. We know that pulling all-nighters is unlikely to improve the overall quality of our academic work, but we don’t really know. We know that getting involved in campus activities and sticking around on the weekends would make us happier in the long run, but we don’t really know. We know that reckless posts in online forums can have negative consequences for ourselves and others, but we don’t really know.

Maybe there’s no alternative to learning some of these things the hard way. I’ve often needed the equivalent of a bad meal on a hot day to motivate me to choose a healthier path. But my experience also tells me that it’s possible to turn some “knowledge” into real knowledge by experimenting with healthier behaviors, paying close attention to the results, and absorbing the lessons they imply.