When you don't know

I was taken aback by a project that I began when I thought I had understood all the details and steps I was supposed to do. Then I got into it and realized how much I didn't know about the project that I was undertaking.

I am calling this the law of "you don't know what you don't know until you find out you don't know it" I think it probably has been a long-standing postulate and probably attributed to great thinkers like Socrates, Mark Twain, or Yogi Berra. 

I remember going on job interviews and being asked, "do you have any questions" and I couldn't think of any. That was until I got in my car on the way home, then suddenly I had a million questions. 

When I was a kid in the '50s, we didn't have access to the information that we do today. Since elders and authorities didn't incline to answer inquisitive kids when you ask a question, you usually answer, "what do I look like the public library?"

Our parents grew up with the frame of mind that you should take the initiative and find out the answers on your own. Sometimes this is effective; other times, it is just a misuse of time. Like in the famous short essay, SOURCE WIKIPEDIA - A Message to Garcia is a widely distributed essay written by Elbert Hubbard in 1899, expressing the value of individual initiative and conscientiousness in work. As its primary example, the essay uses a dramatized version of a daring escapade performed by an American soldier, 1st Lt. Andrew S. Rowan, just prior to the Spanish–American War. The essay describes Rowan carrying a message from President William McKinley to "Gen. Calixto García, a leader of the Cuban insurgents somewhere in the mountain vastness of Cuba—no one knew where". The essay contrasts Rowan's self-driven effort against "the imbecility of the average man—the inability or unwillingness to concentrate on a thing and do it".[1]: 17–18 

The point I wish to make is this: McKinley gave Rowan a letter to be delivered to Garcia; Rowan took the letter and did not ask, "Where is he at?" By the Eternal! there is a man whose form should be cast in deathless bronze and the statue placed in every college of the land. It is not book-learning young men need, nor instruction about this and that, but a stiffening of the vertebrae which will cause them to be loyal to a trust, to act promptly, concentrate their energies: do the thing- "Carry a message to Garcia!"

Well, in my humble opinion, the art of asking questions is certainly undervalued.