The more you know,

The more you know, the more you come to know that there is more to know.
– Andrew Chandrasekar

Before getting to the quote, you would want to hear this story.

It must have been 2001. I and my friend Kumar were on trip in a small village next to Salem.

From the village we could see a small mountain. And the locals said it’s a 1 and half hour claim. And that tribes were living in the forest, without any electricity or in the old ways.

So we decided to do the hike. To meet the tribal people. We took 2 locals and we made the hike.

The mountain seemed small, not that high. There were no hiking route. You would have to claim blindly. The locals knew the route, that is a comfort.

We started around 10, had some water with us. We started the claim. It was so good, we were going through dense bushes. Locals would cut through bushes and we kept claiming.

The sun was hot too. About an hour or so, I had finished all the water I had with me.

 As you can see in the picture, I was fatty. I was dehydrating. We reached the top. Ahh, finally I exhaled. But at the top, there was nothing, the mountain went to small valley and we could a second hill, higher than the first one that we had seen from the village.

We had to claim a little down and then make the claim on the second one. By the time, I was drinking  water that the locals had with them and my friend”s bottle. We were drinking water because of the heat.

We reached the top of the second hill. By this time it was 3 or 4 hours on the hike. Ahhhhh.. finally, beautiful it was. But, there was no village.

It was plain and there you could see the 3rd hill that look higher than the other two. And you could see mist kissing it.

A locals said, we should claim that.

I was exhausted. No water, and I could not go any further and we can not go back either.

Before I tell you what happened next, here is the moral.

Knowledge is similar to this experience. You look at a distance, it seems small.

You start gaining it and  you start learning, you think you reach the top.

But at the top you realize that there is more to learn.

The more you learn, the more you come to realize, that there is more to learn.

You hit a plateau and then you see a high hill again, higher climb of knowledge.

Only a learned could say,

“what I know is handful and what I don’t know is like a ocean” – Ovaiyar

The knowledge itself humbles you.
And you come to the realization that you can not know. It is then you, open your arms and realize God’s knowledge is higher.

Isaiah 55:8-9
 New International Version

8 “For my thoughts(A) are not your thoughts,
neither are your ways my ways,”(B)
declares the Lord.
9 “As the heavens are higher than the earth,(C)
so are my ways higher than your ways
and my thoughts than your thoughts

It humbles you. There is so much to know, and it is unknowable by your human mind.

By this point, most would think. What is the point of climbing if the knowledge is unattainable?

A good way to think.

Yet, the goal is not reaching the top. People have dopamine kick when they reach a goal.  That is true, a pure natural instinct. You feel good. Yet, that is not the goal.

The goal is not the top or the destination. The goal is the climb. The climb is the goal. You reach the top, you enjoy and you see the next hill, that happens.

But the goal of the hike is the climb itself. You dopamine kick doesn’t happen at the top, but during the climb.

This thinking changes everything. God is more interested in the process than the promise.

Promise would come but the process takes you there. The process is the promise. Promise comes with the process.

I was exhausted, felt I could not go anymore. But the climb was the kick. We pushed on, as we were walking, I was pounding, I was grabbing the tree branches to climb. Every step thirsty for water.

And often we would hear the sound of rattling in the bush and then I would get a rush of energy to run forward 🙂

And eventually we started hearing the sound of water, but couldn’t see the water fall, or a stream, but the sound was getting louder.

A tribal villager showed up rearing a small herd of mountain sheep. We breathed. Now he took us to the village.

It was a beautiful place in the mist. It was 4 in the evening. And I drank the water from the small stream that they had created around the village.

Wow, the water so tasty. It had the taste of mugkani, three fruits spoken by poets in sangam literature. Wowww I said.

A fruit of the climb. But, then we realised that was not the village we were supposed to be in. They showed a water fall in distance and on top of an another moutain. There was the village we were supposed to be. That is the bigger village.

But I said, I can not. So the option was to go back. These villagers looked at us with suspicion. No visitors have come there, so they said they would not allow us to stay there.

So the locals that were with us, said let’s go back down quickly. Now we can take supply from here and go back.

But I wanted to see the sunrise from this untouched landscape and honestly I did not have energy to go back and it was getting dark.

So one of the local said I will go back and inform in the town otherwise they would be worried.

The whole villagers of the tribe assembled in the centre of the village. The leaders questioned us, why and what we’re doing in the hills. They do not like cops. My friend had a close hairstyle of police. And we were pants and looked alien. We totally looked strangers. So they thought we were spying. There was a discussion.

But after much discussion, they must have looked at me, and said this fat guy looks harmless 🙂 they finally decided to let us stay in a common communal cooking hut.

They gave us no food, no blanket, nothing to sleep on, no body spoke a word to us.

The night was cold, in open terrain, hungry. What a night. We could not sleep the night. Cold, and tired from the hiked, we dosed off. Some how we managed it.

Then there was the sunrise, early morning on top of the mountain, piercing through the mist that was clearing. What a sight… sound of nature singing praise to glorious Father.

It is worth it, all the trouble, it is worth it.

And by 7 am few locals from town climbed up with rice and chicken. Now after that, when they saw the people they knew, the tribals trusted us and cooked meal for us with rice that was brought from the town.

The moral of the story is this. The more you know, it is then you know that there is more to know.

The destination is not the goal, the climb is the goal.

The more you know, the more you come to know, that there is more to know.