The most important thing I learned from Cornell, something kneaded into me with every impossible assignment completed, was that nothing is actually beyond me. There's nothing too hard, too complicated, too esoteric or too impressive that I simply lack the capacity to understand. Such things don't exist.
"The secret things belong to the Lord our God, but the things that are revealed belong to us and to our children forever..."
- Deuteronomy 29:29
This realization, if worked into your bones and your knee-jerk reaction to new ideas, is a great blessing. Whole new worlds break open, and the quest for the key to the gate of each new kingdom just becomes a puzzle-hunt. There's also a bit of a curse, or perhaps just a new challenge:
Once there's nothing you feel you can't do, once the artificial barrier is removed, suddenly you have no barrier to dabbling in everything. I've started 14 books, I follow 77 blogs, there are 64 unread articles in my Instapaper inbox... It gets out of hand rather quickly.
I hypothesize that what I need is a new, better barrier, as well as a way to prune the system periodically. I'd definitely take suggestions though. Tweet @danielpcox to let me know what you think.