On turning 30 and being stupid.

I’m turning 30 this coming Sunday, and I’m surprisingly cool with that. Granted, my attention is more focused on the impending arrival of a shiny new human to feed and clothe, at the moment. But I’m fairly comfortable with the idea of being an official grownup, and I think it’s because I’ve come to terms with how much I don’t know.

A longtime friend of mine shared this link the other day, and the salient points within unearthed flashbacks of library school. This is usually the exact same jag I go on when somebody makes a flippant joke about needing a Master’s degree to shelve books; my job is not to provide answers, but to figure out what the question is. People generally operate within the confines of that first “educational ideal” pie chart, placing emphasis primarily on what they know and how to add to it. There’s no easy way of addressing information that you don’t know you’re lacking, however, and so I often have to tease out what the real information need is. A question about parenting could really be about child psychology. People who need information on a specific battle of a particular war will often just ask me where the history books are. I remember one person a while back who asked for exercise books, and as it turned out, she needed information on anaphylactic shock. She was following what her own experience told her, and honestly didn’t know where else to look or how else to ask for that information. Most of what a librarian does from day to day consists of asking questions and searching repositories of information to help someone sort out the difference between what they do know they don’t know, and what they don’t know they don’t know.

Of course, there are plenty of days where that sounds like bright-eyed nonsense. Particularly since the time spent on the glorious quest for knowledge is generally overshadowed by countless hours showing people how to use the printer, placing holds on the latest fad novel, and foiling people who concoct elaborate schemes to bypass their fines in order to continue their important work playing solitaire on our computers. But in a general sense, the heart of what I do is discovering the unexpressed information need behind the initial question, because for various reasons, there always is one.

The beneficial side effect of all this is that I appear to know what I’m doing. As that article points out, though, I spend most of my time feeling just about as clueless as the people who are asking me questions. I feel like a fraud sometimes, finding information through the same channels that they could have used, and being thanked effusively for it, as if I had doled out my tidbits of wisdom from on high. Scraps of knowledge from the Elysian table of your public library. Computer wizardry!

Though, I do learn something new every day through my patrons’ questions. So, that’s nice.

Anyway, I’ve become used to the idea that sitting underneath an “Information” sign doesn’t mean I know everything, or even most things, I’m asked about. I think that’s why I’ve taken such a cavalier attitude towards the slow encroachment of middle age. Although my adorable larva will spend eight to twelve years taking my parental omniscience as a given, I feel like I’ve finally been let on to the big secret of adulthood: we still don’t know what we’re doing. Probably never will. And it’s cool, man, it’s cool.

But it helps that I share the general opinion expressed in that article. I love discovering more about what I don’t know. It always ensures that I have another book to read, or another hobby at which I can be a fumbling beginner. That feels to me like the true hallmark of wisdom, rather than amassing a collection of facts (so wipe that smug smile off your goddamned face, Ken Jennings). It’s a hard sell for most people though, because acknowledging the vast ocean of stuff we don’t know makes us feel stupid. And if public service has taught me anything, it’s that people don’t like feeling stupid. The more stupid someone feels, the more likely they are to insist that the stupidity lies elsewhere. Seriously. The only people who ever get in my face at work are the ones who realize that I have caught on to, and am wholly unimpressed by, some ridiculous effort of theirs to work the system. But, you know, I’m the stupid one. For having those stupid rules they got caught breaking in the first place.

That’s an extreme example, but really, I see it all the time. People who need information and realize that they don’t really know what they’re looking for or how to find it come in two varieties. The first group is friendly, chatty, and is actually having fun trying to puzzle out what it is they need. The second group is visibly embarrassed, irritated at the library because this stupid building doesn’t have what they’re looking for on a dais at the entrance, and impatient with my dumb questions, because how are they supposed to know what they need? Isn’t that what I’m there for? Blargarabble taxes pay your salary blargh!

It’s taken me nearly 30 years to move from the second group into the first group. I’ve always placed so much importance on knowledge that I spent my formative years feeling inadequate if I didn’t have enough of it. Which, in turn, has led to all sorts of interesting scenarios that I kind of wish never happened. But I’m good, now. I’ve adjusted my pie chart, just in time for the gray hairs to start appearing.