Not All Knowledge

Finally, four o’clock arrives. I don’t live far from work, maybe a mile. I usually just walk every day. St. George’s Bar is having a BOGO sale on whiskey shot tonight. Maybe I’ll stop by for an hour or so. As I get to the bar, Ashley, the bartender, asks me if I want ‘the usual.’ I nod distracted by the guy who comes to sit right next to me. This bar is never busy so there’s usually plenty of seats, so why did he suddenly sit next to me? “Hello madam.” His strange dialect catches me off guard once more. “I’ll have what he’s having.” He looks over to me then takes one of his shots and tosses it back. “That’s a strong drink. Bad day?” I’m dumbfounded unsure of what’s happening right now. “Are you alright?” he asks with a nonchalant look. “Oh, um, yes. I’m fine,” I clear my voice.

He starts talking to me as if we’ve known each other for years. He tells me about all the adventures he’s had, all the people he’s met. He even tells me about all the money he’s made and all the time he’s wasted. He tells me about all the things he learned, more than he could’ve imagined, more than he could’ve wished to know. Who is this person? I whisper under my breath, “I wish I could have a life like that.” I look down at my watch and back at his face. Before I realized it, three hours have passed. It only felt like five minutes. Smiling, he looks at me and says, “I would like to help you achieve this life that you want.” Out of his pocket, he pulls out a leather pouch about the size of a piece of paper. He looks down at it and his demeanor changes to something more desolate. “It’s not much, but it’ll get you started. I think you’ll find more use of this than I have. But be careful, for not all knowledge is worth knowing.” He hands me the pouch, tips the bartender, smiles at me, and leaves the bar.

I look down at the pouch and open it. How strange, it’s an envelope and a little black book, like a diary. I flip open the cover and it reads, “To whomever may find this: Beware, for not all knowledge is worth knowing.” Baffled, I close the book and head home. Once home, I turn on the tv, but I can’t stop thinking about that man at the bar. The envelope. I never looked to see what was in it. I grab the leather pouch, pull out the book and the envelope. Do I really want to know? Hesitantly, I open it and there’s money, a lot of money! I go ahead and count it, twenty thousand dollars?! I shove the envelope and book back into the pouch and go to bed. Unable to sleep, questions just keep running through my mind. What does it mean? What is so important about this book? Why did that man want to get rid of it? What kind of knowledge is not worth knowing? I can’t help it. I must look through that little black book. I get the book and start flipping through the pages. Blank. Every single page is completely blank. Faster and faster, I turn each page. Am I missing something? Amazed at its emptiness, I go to bed.

The next day, I wake up with a pounding headache. As I reach for the medicine, the pouch lies on the counter. What am I supposed to do it with this? On my way to work, I notice everyone walking past me is mumbling something. The more I watch, no one is saying anything. Maybe it’s my headache messing with me. Work is as usual; I normally just block everyone out unless someone comes up to my desk to speak with me. Mr. Corrin, my boss, comes and sits on the corner of my desk. “Are you alright? You look terrible.” His voice keeps talking, but his lips stop moving. What is happening right now? A few minutes pass and I hear him say, “he probably went out drinking again last night.” “What did you say?” I ask. “Hmm? I didn’t say anything,” as he walks away. Befuddled, I look around the office. One after another I can hear my co-workers. Their lips never moving. Maybe I should go home.

I take the rest of the day off claiming to be sick. But things are getting weird now. Every person that walks by, every stranger, I hear them. They’re not even speaking, and I can hear them. The secrets, the wants, the needs, the thoughts of all these people running through my mind as if they were having a casual conversation with me. I stop by St. George’s Bar again, hoping to see the strange man that gave me that pouch. I ask Ashley if he came in today. “Who are you talking about?” she asked. I go on to explain what the man looked like and how long we had been here the day before. Confused, she looks at me and shrugs, “I don’t know what or who you’re talking about.” Now I’m even more lost. Is this all just a dream that I have yet to wake up from? Ashley looks at me. “Please don’t stay here and drink all night again. I have no patience to watch you drown yourself again.” Astonished, I look at her and say, “I’m sorry that I was such a burden to you. Don’t worry I won’t be back to this bar again.” She says, “I didn’t even say anything. What are you talking about?” “Even so, I heard you loud and clear.” I walked away in disbelief. Day after day, the thoughts of everyone I look at overwhelms me. There is so much going on in my head that I don’t know how to control it. Is this all from that stupid blank book? Maybe, this is what that man meant? Not all knowledge is worth knowing. No kidding. This sucks. How do I stop this? I don’t want to know what everyone else is thinking. I want to go back to my normal life with my boring job and my bad drinking habits.

As I get back home, I look at that pouch of money. Money would be a good way to deal with this. Maybe by using this new gift of mine, I can make a whole lot of money. And I did. I made more money than I could have to do with. I gave so much of it away to people in need because what else was I going to do with it? I took trips all around the world and saw things most people only dream of. But it was never enough to stop the voices from echoing through my brain. So, I started giving away all my money. I have never had many friends or family so there was no one to really give it to besides the people in need. But no matter what I did, the thoughts of others never stopped. I had learned so much about people and about all kinds of different things that I would have never even thought of learning about. Honestly, most of it is useless information. Most of it was stuff I could have lived without ever knowing. There was a couple of times when I thought ‘oh, that’s good to know.’ But realistically, I didn’t even need to know those things either.

It’s been a few years now since I first came across that man in the bar with the mysterious pouch. I think about it all the time still. That day changed my life forever. But I do understand now, having lived a life with knowledge. I understand now that not all knowledge is worth knowing. I get it. Maybe I can give this give to someone else? I have all this money, wisdom, and knowledge. I want to give someone else a chance to know what it’s like. As I’m walking along the pier, down the beach from my house, I see someone standing on the cap board at the end. I walk up calmly to the man and say, “Are you alright?” He begins to explain why he’s about to jump and why he feels like this is the only answer. I look at him with solace. “I was like you once.” I tell him about how my life used to be and how one day, I was given a small token and it changed my life. He looked at me in disbelief unsure how I could possibly understand.

I look at him and say, “I would like to give you something. It’s not much, but it will get you started.” I handed him the leather pouch with that silly little black book and an envelope with twenty thousand dollars in it. “I hope you find more use out of it than I have. But just be careful, for not all knowledge is worth knowing.” He looked at me like I was crazy. In his mind, I could hear that he was unsure how to proceed. As I started to walk away, his voice in my head started getting lower and lower. Eventually, I couldn’t hear it and I turned around to see him standing in the same place I left him in, still wary of the little leather pouch I’ve just given him. I walked home and realized that as every person who walked past me that day, I couldn’t hear what they were thinking. In my bed, I lay there in silence for the first time in years. Accomplished in everything I had done in my life, I never thought that the only thing I’d ever want again was just silence. All the knowledge I gained, money I made, none of it could compare to the silence. But I will forever remember: Not all knowledge is worth knowing.