March 15

A question whose answer everyone else apparently knows is one you usually ask only once you have carried it around long enough. Until then, you nod. Nodding costs nothing and makes you look knowledgeable. Only, afterwards you understand no more than you did before.

Learning something means, at some point, showing the exact spot where you can't yet do it. What makes that unpleasant is above all the uneven timing: the impression you make forms at once; understanding comes later, if at all.

Alongside this there is a second, quieter confusion. Not every puzzled look means you're on the right track. Sometimes the other person is simply right. Once you have grown used to being thought simple-minded, that very thing can start to look like proof. Then you listen as little as you did back when you only nodded.

From the inside, the two situations feel much alike: a little defiance, a little shame.

After the conversation you write the answer down. It is shorter than you had feared, and at one point it still doesn't convince you.