The Learning Slope

Do you know this feeling❔ When you start studying a subject, and you feel like mister-know-all?

You are the best at it 🦸 It's beyond you figuring out how others in the subject haven't learned as fast as you do. Then, as you progress into educating yourself in the subject, you realize how much there is to learn. You see how mistaken you were and compare your work to others who actually know. This is the valley of despair 😩

You look at where you think is the peak of knowledge is only to find it veiled underneath a thick cloud 🌫️ The path becomes less traveled-through, and you have to make your own way with your dull machete that is your brain-power. Discovering how more and more sub-subjects rise from the ground like plants 🌿🌱🍀, the desperation becomes a twisting feeling in your stomach. You think you'd never see the peak, admiring people who reached it already. In a slow process of practicing, your machete becomes sharper. That's when you're on the Slope of Enlightenment. Day by day, you navigate your way up the mountain, realizing how much you actually know already. You realize that no one has ever reached the summit, but you can get higher 🧗 You cut thicker plants, making yourself a more and more comfortable path. It's a hard path, but you are getting used to it. It's your path.

Until, after years of walking this challenging trail, you reach the Plateau of Sustainability 😮‍💨 There, you are confident in your abilities. You know this path so well that you are in a place of telling others how to walk it 🧙 And you keep on walking, regally and calmly 🚶 Dunning-Kruger Effect is how it's called. It's your confidence on the way to Expertise. And, right now, I'm at the Valley of Despair. The path to the mastery of storytelling is so veiled I can't even see my own way. I don't give up; I know the Slope of Enlightenment is somewhere in this thick jungle of knowledge. I will keep on climbing. If you are there as well, I want to tell you that I know it's hard. Walking higher is always hard. Just think of the next step. I'm here to push you from behind 👍 Ascend.

*In the picture—the luxury of your path