People say that ‘knowing something is half the battle’. But what does it actually mean and is it really true? Or is it something we tell ourselves to make whatever has happened less impactful on our emotions?
I was having a discussion with someone recently and this topic came up. It got me thinking about it and so I decided that I needed to look into it more. There is a level of resilience I guess in the process of ‘knowing being half the battle’, resilience being the ability to bounce back from adversity, which I have spoken about before in ‘Plan B’. But how and why can pain and suffering make us stronger and make the ‘battle’ easier? I would personally believe that in most situations I want to know the truth and I can then decide how to deal with it. But, do I really need to know the truth about everything? No, because sometimes knowing everything will not be beneficial for me and will do me more harm than good. Does that mean I believe I should be lied to? It certainly does not, but I think there are always situations where we do not need to know everything.
If you look at it from Kahlil Gibran’s point of view, in his writing ‘The Prophet’, he talks about joy and sorrow and that “the deeper that sorrow carves into your being, the more joy you can contain”. Without bad in life, we would never know or appreciate what good feels like because things are always good. I also believe people who have suffered great sorrow can share a different level of appreciation for things in their lives and around them. However, saying that everyone needs to go through deep sorrow to be, happy, is a lot to take in. And for some people being happy after great sorrow is something that is not fully possible for them, everyone is doing the best that they can do.
Focusing back on if knowing is half the battle, the term apparently originated in a kids cartoon ‘G.I. Joe’. The meaning was going into a battle, knowing what was to come on the other side, which was half the battle. To understand that a bit further, knowledge and understanding makes up half of whatever the situation may be and the other half is the battle. So, bringing that into other life contexts, I would see it as, knowing would be understanding yourself and the context of the situation you are facing, and the other half would be another person or the situation itself. But, when it comes to real-life can we really apply this? Yes, for sure, being self-aware and knowing yourself is vital in any situation and will determine how you react or interact, but we cannot plan for how another person or situation is going to react or pan out because we cannot predict another person. The only thing that is predictable is the unpredictability of people.
So thinking is knowing half the battle, correct or not, I guess it comes down to our values, beliefs, or our personal preference of what is right or wrong? I wonder though why do we believe that if we know about something, it is easier to prepare for it? Grief is grief, whether you know you will lose someone or something at a specific time or it happens suddenly, no matter what the loss is.
I think, all in all, after all my research and quest to know more. I believe it is something we tell ourselves to try to explain what is sometimes unexplainable. ‘If I had known I could have…’ or knowing makes it easier to move on from the situation. At the end of the day, we are just putting a band-aid over the emotions that we are really feeling or showing the world our band-aid and dealing with all our feelings in silence, which is never going to solve how we are feeling and helping us move on and heal.
It is also our perception of how we view ourselves and how we view society’s view of us. Which is a lot to take in. So there you have it, I do not believe knowing is half the battle. When something hurts, it hurts. But that is also my perception. So which one do you believe in, and what are your thoughts?
