It All Blends Together

I recently watched Ratatouille once more and it was an excellent movie (with movie review to follow later this week). But the reason I mention it here is because I quoted a line from the movie... without knowing it was from the movie... to my best friend. Orion and I were speaking on the phone, doing our usual strategy/brainstorming talk, and I quoted him this line during our conversation:

"I hate false modesty. It's just another form of lying."

Of course, Orion being Orion meant that he didn't quite accept what I said as immediate fact. Indeed, he challenged the line itself, saying it was only true to a certain extent... but my point in bringing all of this up is how movies and books and other material starts to blend in to your thinking (influencing your perspective).

See, I've been thinking about this a lot ever since an acquiantance of mine asked me about how many books I read per week. The answer is about two per week, with a lot of daily news and blog reading, and he challenged me by saying, "Isn't that sort of inefficient? How do you remember everything you read?" and at the time I was somewhat stumped. But I have the answer now... and it is that I don't remember everything I read. In fact, it's far from it since I probably remember maybe 15-25% of what I read... but that's exactly the point!

I subject myself to so many random thoughts and perspectives from books, blogs, news, and movies so that I can store the key bits of information away for later use. The most recent example of this that I can remember is quoting a line from Ratatouille without even remembering where it was from... and yet, in quoting the line during the conversation, I added a timely perspective that set off a whole other conversation and in doing so subtly reminded the person I was having a conversation with that I have many perspectives from which to draw from; this helps when the person you're talking with also happens to be the co-founder of the company that you try to use to influence education in a positive manner! To that point, subjecting yourself to so many different opinions and perspectives helps throughout your entire life by allowing you to capitalize on other people's experiences and knowledge.