On the one hand I despair at being in the company of dilettantes, people who don't know very much and yet are willing to parade their understanding ad nauseam. "I understand," they say, and I want to skin them alive.
I will honor the man or woman who says simply, "I don't know," but those who claim to "understand" while every half-baked action reeks of ignorance and ineptitude ... well, hand me the shotgun, will you?
In somewhat the same phylum, there are the experts -- people who really do know quite a lot about a particular topic and yet never seem to have learned the value of the dictum, "shut the fuck up!"
It is warming to be among people who know what I may know a little about ... but the warming part seems to show itself most clearly when, instead of wallowing in our expertise, we talk about baseball or chasing butterflies or the best hot-dog joint in town or the perfect yo-yo.
Somehow, the true depths seem to display themselves best in the shallows.I doubt if I would feel as strongly as I do about dilettantes and experts if I weren't 100% guilty of the behavior I can abhor.
Oh well ... I never said I was perfect (though naturally there is a pitch-fork-waving leprechaun within who insists that of course I am).
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