In Pursuit of Knowing It All

Life has felt very stagnant lately. The time of year is, in part, to blame – the slow days of winter dragging one into the next, driving monotony into my everyday routine that would have me awake before sunrise and not returning home until long after sunset. But there was something more to it than that; something that has stayed hanging over my shoulders even as the days grow longer and the evenings stretch toward the horizon.

I always assume this stagnation, this ennui that settles in, comes from a lack of excitement – in those moments where I’m not packing or repacking to travel off somewhere new or familiar, or so deeply entrenched in the height of busy season at work or a new project that I don’t how to keep myself entertained. I’ve mulled over this concept in the past weeks, trying to pinpoint how I could shake off that feeling of stagnation in the moments where all I should be really doing is hibernating and taking the downtime to rest and recover from all that the year will bring. 

The more I thought on it, the more I narrowed in on that which causes the excitement – it is not the busy, although I’ve often purported to thrive from it, nor is it even quite just the feeling of the new, although that certainly has its own adrenalin. It’s that in those times, whether I am on the road or writing a new book or just busy, I am undoubtedly learning something.

Learning the world one cobblestone at a time.

That’s what I’m seeking when stagnation sets in. I am seeking to learn; I am seeking the knowledge I do not yet possess. Because in all the existential dread this year has thrown up (my brother advises I’m having my delayed quarter-life crisis and not to worry about it, but I still do) nothing strikes me with more fear than the idea that I might die without knowing it all. 

Fundamentally, I understand I can and never will know it all. I could travel to every far corner of the earth, read as many books as humanly possible, and converse with people to the moon and back, and I still could not possibly know it all. But for what short time I do have on this earth, I am desperate to learn as much of it as I possibly can.

Each medium through which I explore the world teaches me in different ways. Travel has been teaching me since before I could walk; each new street corner introducing me a little further to the great vastness of the world. The more I learn, the more I want to know; it is why, every time I return, I am itching to go again, another handful of places added to the staggeringly long list of countries I would like to visit (or re-visit).

In writing, I learn in focused bursts as I narrow in different topics or historical eras, immersing myself into pockets in order to inform my own work. And at work, I learn as much about film as I do about people, and their many nuances. 

Sometimes, my learning intersects between travel and writing research.

We forget the extent of the knowledge we carry around with us everyday, unconscious to how much we all learned without even realising we were doing so. I forget, even, how much I know about the industry I work in, until I find myself at the receiving end of questions from those just starting out, and realise how easily the answers come. 

So, then, if it all it takes to shake off the stagnation is to learn something new, shouldn’t that be so simple a thing? I don’t need to start a vast new project or book a ticket, I just need to pick up a book or throw myself into a research rabbit hole or take an evening class. 

But therein, I meet my next problem: how to choose. The bookshelf by my desk houses all my non-fiction books, many of them as-yet unread: everything from biographies to travel diaries to great unsolved mysteries to modern psychology. In the same way that I am sometimes overwhelmed by what project to start on next, I am overwhelmed by all the things I want to learn with no idea where to start.

To fight the stagnation, I was on the cusp of throwing myself into writing another book this spring. I never typically write in the spring; reserving the time for editing or short-form work here and there. I shelved this idea before I even started, in part due to some longer-term planning I need to do in relation to my writing projects, but in part because I finally realised that the way to fight stagnation is not to drive myself to exhaustion. 

I spent a Saturday morning recently reading (fiction, for fun) and found myself staving off the kind of chest pains I associate entirely with stress. I was stressed that I was reading a book on the weekend and not doing something productive. 

Somewhere between stagnate and the busy parts of my life, there has to be a space of rest. There has to be a space of enjoyment for enjoyment’s sake and learning for learning’s sake. Because I have a feeling if I were to know it all, I’d learn the thing I really should have done is stopped to enjoy the simple fact of living once in a while.