Why I'm Sharing Notes — Learned Too Late

There’s an anecdote about Richard Feynman when a historian walks up to his desk and sees all the sheets of paper lying around on Mr Feynman desk and makes a comment about these being a record of Feynman’s thinking and then Mr Feynman corrects the historian and says that: these are not a record of my thinking i think on paper and then the historian presses on and says that surely you’re thinking in your head and these are only records of the thoughts in your head and that’s when Mr Feynman says: no they aren’t a record of my thinking process they are my thinking process. I actually did the work on the paper.

If I were to say the most important feature of making my life interpretable, it would be writing. I make sense of what is changing in my life through my writing, publicly, I don’t mention exciplicitly what is changing, but instead I just write. mostly about my beliefs, what I value, and the challenge I’m facing at the time. I do it multiple times throughout the year, and just by comparison, I can tell what changed. This self-reflection can help me distinguish between actual growth and commitments I made due to bad experiences, whether I adopted sudo-nihilism to cope with misfortunes, or if my pace in learning is slow and the road is very steep. All sorts of learnings in my journey are coming from my writings.

Around 2018, I and Abd Alwahab Were arguing about some existential questions as teenagers while walking along the train track in the borders of our little small town district of Al-Daroshab , I came up with the realization that all the people who have died, are unable in anyway to share the lessons they have learned, not even as single lesson. through any channel. 

I remember that I never stopped talking about that idea with him that day. Years later, after deepening my understanding of our religion, Islam, the importance and encouragement of knowledge sharing, and the intolerance of not sharing knowledge.

Although the priority is sharing the Islamic teachings and standing beside what is right. But I found that sharing small, minor details of our lives might be valuable. 

Scarcity of information:

I was lucky that I was provided with an abundance of resources and access to people whom I can ask questions. I was raised having a computer, a brother to guide me through the installation of translators and IDEs on my machine, although he only just told me the names, but I was born lucky to some extent. I couldn’t even comprehend the idea of thinking about how my life would have been without having access to all the people and information. What I learned as a child significantly influenced the person I have become today. I never had the chance to appreciate this. Until a later period of my life, when I noticed a pattern of how the availability of information can lead to different lives.

In my primary-schooling period, I was smarter than most kids in “Computer” lessons and labs. And the teachers always ask me the following questions

“Where did you learn this from?” or “Does your father come from an IT background?” so there must be a source of information, as they are assuming there is a light that must have guided you. something that sparked the first interest. That has led you to the person you are today. The same question is being repeated to students who are excelling in math (I suck at math), and looking back after I investigate them, they also had some sort of access to information (private tutor, aspirations, someone recommended a book for them), and so on.

A model to understand information sharing.

During my last year in high school, I started to view the world as a big network of knowledge/information sharing. I teach you computer science subject(what I use to do) and Abdalrahman (Math nerd who used to teach us mathematics) no matter how you are good in one subject you will always need help from different people, who are either in the same specialization that you’re looking for help with, or something else, This result of this processing of sharing information is to facilitate lives.

What is wisdom does it have something to do with Making life much easier:

I remember taking a consultation from Ali Azam one day about what university to pick, he told me that the university you’re going to pick will determine your next five years if not having a contribution to your whole life. He guided me through how its not just the name and reputation of the university but also the city where you live and ..etc a very concise definition of wisdom that I developed is: better decision making.

As I see many people are thinking about wisdom that same way as knowledge and whenever they heard the world a wise man they imagine someone who’s moving around with 200 IQ and quote to say everywhere. They ignore the fact that a wise man not only knowing but make actions and decisions based on his information.

If you zoom into your lifespan you would find there is this one component of decision making that significantly influenced your life today/the person who you are.

These decision are sometimes big ; whether to continue education or not, sometimes small; should I read today or play, the word decision is not about just being prompt to select between 2 or multiple choices, but it’s what you’re doing everyday you’re unconsciously calculate if you are going to sleep early or not whether you want to skip your leg day or study… etc

Every decision matter, not making a choice is also a choice

Things I feel sorry about:

One of the things I felt would make my life so much easier is knowing how to do math. Throughout my schooling period, I never encountered a math teacher who encouraged me to love math or helped me to do it; they did the exact opposite, except for the statistics and probability experience. And no wonder I love statistics more.

When I entered university, I had to deal with all the previous experiences that had affected me. The access to top-tier students helped me make better decisions based on what they have experienced from success, failures, for instance, my senior Zainab helped me significantly understand math structure, and that I lack prerequisites for some courses.

This information sharing resulted in making my life easier. Sure, the math I had to deal with wasn’t easy, but in the hope of making this decision of going back to prerequisites, no matter how hard it is, it made my life later easier.

I have seen people who never stop talking, but I couldn’t mine any useful information that would facilitate my life, while with little chatting with the most introverted person in the room, I can get advice that I never had the chance to know about.

I shared my experiences in multiple aspects of life, whether it’s something big like joining a computer science school or not, or minor like recommending a software.

While I was scared people would make a decision based on my experience, I kept emphasizing the idea that they should use the information they obtained from me as a data point, not final words, and it’s based on my experience, I try as much as I can to be unbiased and to tell what matches their needs. sometimes I receive messages from people saying that the decision they made has led a successful results, AKA make their lives so much easier. which I found very fascinating. most people who can help with information will be hesitant to share it, and even the failure when sharing it can be used as a decision making by someone else; this is basically how our lives work.

The reason why I’m writing these articles is the hope that there is someone who will make use of them in one way, taking a single idea that would inshallah help make their life easier.