We interact with the world through maps of meaning. You may think that you understand how a helicopter flies, but the reality is that if you’re like most people, the extent of your chopper aviation knowledge probably boils down to “whirly thing on top of the vehicle body pushes enough air down to make that bad boy go up”. That’s a pretty foggy map of meaning. If you had to tell someone how to build a helicopter, you probably wouldn’t have a clue where to start – there’s just way too much fog between the reality and your perception of it.

Despite this, we haphazardly wander through the fog of life, handing our poorly-written helicopter schematics to everyone we encounter. We download our own fog into the impressionable minds of our youth, then have the arrogance to think we are doing them a favour. Our own ego is so enlarged that we actually start to assume we know what lies behind the fog. We give money advice, despite never having made our first million. We talk politics, while relying on nothing but a database of headlines cobbled together with a massive dollop of confirmation bias. Blindly walking through the cloudy abyss of daily existence, you may find lavish treasures or stumble into horrific tragedy. Wins are called lucky, and losses unfortunate.

Stop throwing around your fog-filled opinions in front of people who have done the work to actually clear the fog. To those that have created clarity in the domain, it’s like watching a friend tell a heavily exaggerated story about an event you were there for. You don’t correct him (out of politeness), but you make a mental note that he is an unreliable source of truth.

Accept that everything you say is a foggy generalisation, and try to make allowances for this. Strongly held opinions are silly, because the entirety of your life experiences are a pretty small sample size in relation to the entirety of humanity’s knowledge.

The good news is that humans are social creatures. We help each other. The purpose of school is to teach you how to clear fog across a range of verticals. Good teachers clear fog for students, but great teachers show students how to clear the fog themselves

Learn how to get really good at something.

Not because the ability to play Beethoven on piano is useful, but because the journey to get there clears fog in so many important areas. You will start to see that clearing fog gives you purpose, and all experts are just people who have cleared a heap of fog in a single field. Excelling at a skill gives you the discernment to find tiny imperfections, the creativity to form solutions, and the discipline to repeat the two in a never-ending march towards mastery.

Humilty is accepting the existence of fog. Courage is doing something about it.

Clear the fog.

“If you know the way broadly, you will see it in everything”

— Miyamoto Musashi.