Possessing knowledge

My subconscious makes the following assumption about my library. It thinks that merely owning the books implies that I possess the knowledge within them.

This is clearly ludicrous. My consciousness knows this, but that doesn’t stop me forgetting that the point of possessing the books was so that I would read them and learn something from them. Perhaps my subconscious thinks of these things as “external storage”; I’d be a whole lot better off, however, if I put some of them into internal memory.

This was highlighted today. I’ve been lugging a research paper around with me for quite some time, knowing that it was useful and important. Now that I have finally read it I know why it is useful and important and in what area … and, of course, I wish I’d read it earlier.

Second, I had lunch with Anne across at Linacre College, and there was a student sharing our table reading some Oscar Wilde. It made me realise how few of the “classics” I have read, despite the fact that I consider myself a moderately literate person.

The BIG problem is that there is so much to read, so much to know, so much to do.