How Do I Know What I Know?

   As we grow up, we learn about a million ways to learn.  We take in information in all of these different ways and have to learn, as we go, how to sort out what is useful and helpful and what is harmful to our growth.  The fact is, however, that there is no set way of knowing what we know or learning new things.  We know what we know through a huge combination of many different influences that all come together to teach us something.  Even the simplest of things is the result of multiple "ways of knowing."
   The example that comes to mind for me is baking chocolate chip cookies.  This has been something that I have done since I was tall enough to reach the counter, something that I watched being done since before I can even remember.  When I first started to learn how to make chocolate chip cookies, I was all about the recipe.  A fairly cautious child, I checked and re-checked about a billion times to make sure I was getting the exact right amount of everything and doing everything in just the right order.  But this technique did not serve to make the best cookies.  I had to let the other aspect of learning take a little more control, the role of experience.  I had seen these cookies made all my life, and so part of me knew what I was doing without trying.  That part can be easily silenced by too much attention to detail, and it is important that we don't let that happen, because it is crucial to knowing what we know.  Sometimes we just know it, and that's it.  I knew to start with the butter and sugar even though it says to do that part separately, and to use a little more flour than suggested and a little less sugar.  I knew how much salt to put in without measuring it out exactly simply by mimicking the motions I knew so well from my mother.
   I think much of what we know is the same as this.  Part of us needs to actively seek knowledge, but part of us needs to let it seep in naturally and not try to answer the question of how we know what we know because we can rest assured that we know it.