Exposure vs Knowledge

I recently watched a video in which the speaker lectured his employees on exposure vs. knowledge. He expressed the importance of having both but said that exposure takes you to another level of living. I agree with him on so many levels. Myself having the highest regards for both knowledge and exposure, I’ve never really made a distinction between the two until now. Putting it all into perspective, this led me to gather my own thoughts on the matter.

Knowledge is something we’re introduced at an early age and we’re taught that knowledge is power. It enables us to rise above adversity, poverty and social ills; and in the age of technology we find ourselves in, knowledge is just a click away. So often I find myself with laptop in hand seeking answers to some random question that popped in my head, or searching for the solution to some foreign equation my daughter has for homework.

But that’s it! That’s the basis of knowledge, we learn it, we use it………Sometimes. But it’s usually stored away in the archive of our psyche. If we’re lucky enough it can be retrieved at will; regurgitated verbatim and people mark you with intelligence. But leaving it too long in storage it’s lost and has to be reprogrammed. I know this first hand. In my former post, I spent eight years immersed in Spanish, either by way of written or verbal communication, despite English being my native tongue, responses in Spanish came at the drop of a hat. Now, almost two years later immersed completely in my own tongue, completely void of Spanish, most of the knowledge I had for the language is gone, except on vague occasions when some written variable crosses my path.

The knowledge or skills we learn from direct participation in following certain instructions limits us. It limits us because it can be forgotten. How many of you still know the formula for finding the area of a Rectangle or Integers or anything learned in Algebra? Unless of course, you’re a whiz, a Mathematician or Teacher. Knowledge, unless used on a daily basis, is quickly forgotten. The information is constantly being overwritten.

Exposure, on the other hand, opens the mind to so much more. It’s the act of subjecting oneself to an influencing experience by charting a path of curiosity. It leads to self-expression, growth, and empowerment! once your consciousness is expanded, it’s almost impossible to shrink it to where it was, before you experienced that which BLEW your mind in the first place. If you’ve spent your life living in Miami, the exposure of taking a trip to Paris will open your mind to so many possibilities, that it would be almost impossible to drive down Miami beach and not feel a sense of longing for Avenue des Champs Elysees.

Exposure is when you can touch, feel and experience something that goes beyond your comprehension of anything that existed before. And that is hard to forget, once you’ve flown first class, it’s impossible to ever fly comfortably in coach.

©Etta D. Richards