People talk a good game about the value of knowledge, but in practice is ignored as often as possible.
Why am I saying this? I have written knowledge base articles at the managers request and then share it with the team. It rarely gets the views when everyone is told to read it. Yes who wants to read boring articles, but when you are told to by management and don’t, it only hurts yourself.
I also remembered a time in my past when I lived in a small town and there was a thrift store that was overflowing with books. Most of the books were 10 cents, and the most expensive might be 25 cents. I bought many books there and filled the walls of my room with bookcases and books. I couldn’t believe that other people didn’t see the value of what those 10 cent books contained.
I bought books there for years and from other places in town. I personally owned thousands of books and read all of them. I loved that I could easily afford those books, and at times I felt the universe was directing me in what to read.
Several mentors of mine would suggest books and even let me borrow books that they had bought. I always appreciated that. One of the downsides of the iPad is that people rarely know the pleasure of just reading a book and putting it down to think about the implications of what it was saying. When people ask what I did in my childhood/growing up I tell that that I wasted my youth reading books.
Now those books have helped unlock a hidden world to others. It has helped me to understand that life is more than it first appears. That there is meaning in life and that even not having all of the answers, we have enough knowledge to see that the world has some kind of structure and design. I don’t claim to know anything about reality, but if this life is all we have, I am happy to have lived it.