“Part of my joy in learning is that it puts me in a position to teach; nothing, however outstanding and however helpful, will ever give me any pleasure if the knowledge is to be for my benefit alone”
There's a joy in recognizing a part of yourself in something. There's that feeling you get from an "aha moment", coming across a realization that resonates inside. Whenever I experience this, I'm grateful that the person writing sat with these thoughts long enough to capture and explain them with such clarity. It takes work to make the words match up with what you're trying to say, and it's easy to feel as though you've understood something until you attempt to explain it. Clear writing is the product of a well-ordered mind, and being able to articulate thinking is an ever evolving skill.
It's important to understand the motivations behind this collective drive to know more. There needs to be a framework for learning, a sort of meta way of thinking about thinking. Charlie Munger, Vice Chairman of Berkshire Hathaway, describes a multi-disciplinary approach, building a "latticework of mental models" to understand the big concepts and use them in an interconnected way. There's also the theory of first principles discussed by Elon Musk, viewing learning as a kind of semantic tree, outlining the roots and strong trunk necessary to grow branches and hang leaves of detailed understanding. Reasoning up from the base instead of by analogy. Combine these two concepts, and this whole project of knowledge gathering and learning could be described as developing a "forest of knowledge".
For a long time I searched for a way to make sense of this. It was never enough just to read. Never enough to take notes, to have pieces of insight scattered across notebooks. Knowledge only exists as potential. Potential for connection, application. Often, it's better to let action and choices demonstrate understanding. The next best thing is to articulate your point of view, to turn the words into works of your own.
There are no real conclusions in this pursuit. Only continuations. Realize that this wonder at our inner landscape is an innately human quality, a constant examination of who we are. Absorb the life experiences of other people, especially through reading, take advantage of the years they've spent thinking about ways to approach similar problems. What resources have they found? How did they incorporate those developments into their view of the world? Put in the necessary work to strengthen the roots and trunk of your own knowledge base in order to reap the long term benefits.