There is a scene in the movie Lawrence of Arabia where one of the soldiers (William Potter) asks his Lieutenant (T.H. Lawrence) to light his cigarette.

Lawrence proceeds to strike a match and set Potter’s cigarette alight (as any good lieutenant would).

Mission accomplished…or so we think.

Rather than blowing out the match, Lawrence holds it out, looks around to make sure he has everyone’s attention, and then proceeds to pinch the flame between two fingers (without flinching).

Clearly amazed by the spectacle, Potter grabs a fresh match, strikes it, and tries to do the same.

As soon as his fingers touch the flame, however, he jumps up and exclaims, “It damn hurts!”

Lawrence, clearly amused by the spectacle, gets up and responds, “Of course it hurts.”

Potter retorts, “Well, what’s the trick then?”

To which Lawrence responds, “The trick, William Potter, is not minding that it hurts.”

This scene “lives rent-free” in my head as the kids say. It does so for many reasons. Beyond just being a high-quality 60 seconds of cinema, the scene speaks to much of what I came to know, experience, and understand over the course of the last year.

I wrote a sentence in my birthday essay (back in August) that is some variation of, “Growing up is simply the process of realizing that clichés are true as hell.”

And while that’s not the quote I hope to be remembered for when all is said and done, it’s one I have continued to come back to over the past few months. It is profoundly un-profound. But more importantly, it’s pretty damn accurate (if I say so myself).

The fact that one can “realize” that something they “already know” is “true” highlights the practical limitations of intellectual knowledge. In a much broader sense, it speaks to the delicate interplay of knowledge, wisdom, and understanding. I recognize that the distinctions between these terms are arbitrary (at worst) and vague (at best). But if being arbitrary is the worst thing I do in this essay, I can live with that.

So, as the (self-proclaimed) arbiter of arbitrariness, I will (arbitrarily) define:

• “Intellectual knowledge” as that which we learn through consumption (be it through books, conversations, or other).
• “Experiential wisdom” as that which we learn through action (be it through failure or success).
• “True understanding” as that which arises when we have managed to attain and synthesize both intellectual knowledge and experiential wisdom for a given “thing.”

We can liken the process of gaining true understanding of a “thing” to the process of getting from point A (not understanding it) to point B (understanding it). And to successfully walk such a path between those two points, we need two things.

The first is our eyes, which allow us to see the path.