Daniel Santos

I came across this quote earlier today, while researching about the expert’s fallacy and how all of us are subject to it.

First I thought the quote was from Oscar Wilde, the Irish writer, as it is attributed to him very much often. But what do I know? I fell for the same fallacy and ended up finding out it’s actually a quote from J. M. Barrie, the English playwright behind the wonderful Peter Pan.

As someone deeply interested in — but almost completely new to — the subject of lifelong learning, I saw this sentence as completely fit to the theme. It is now side by side with my (other) favorite quote to date, from René Descartes, French mathematician who said “I would give everything I know for half of what I ignore”.

Young people — or anyone new to a subject or activity, actually — tend to assume a position of confidence in knowing “all” about that subject, or, at least, knowing more than they actually know about it. Only as we grow older, or more experienced and move from beginners to experts in our careers, do we tend to admit that we don’t know — and couldn’t ever be able to know — everything there is to know.

And this is what I found is so brilliant about the quote which titles this text. It’s an advice to all of us who are aware of not knowing everything. It is an advice to keep humble, to keep in mind there will always be oceans of knowledge to sail, and to keep learning.

Believe me. Everyone has the right to see their idea of a perfect date come to life. Even if their idea of a perfect date is YYYY-MM-DD, the format set out by the ISO 8601 standard to tackle misinterpretation problems that happen when we write dates using numbers.

YYYY-MM-DD is, indeed, my idea of a perfect date. Pun intended.

I live in Brazil, and my country, where we speak Portuguese, goes by the British date format, which is DD/MM/YYYY. The company I work for, on the other hand, is a multinational one, adopting American English as its main language, and its MM/DD/YYYYas the date standard. This could potentially cause problems when talking about, and writing down dates using numbers.

Take 06/09/17, for instance. Does it mean the 9th of June, 2017, or the 6th of September of the same year? During our daily conversations in the company, this kind of confusion is subject to happening because we do write drafts in Portuguese, for example, and sometimes, even local references which are not going to be shared with the general internal public. A second point to consider is the language set to the interface the softwares we use. Mine are all in English, but I have many colleagues who have their software (and date formats) set to Portuguese.

Adopting ISO 8601’s date format is such a clever idea that even Randall Munroe, the brilliant mind behind the excellent xkcd webcomic, translated it to one of his masterpieces:

Adopting ISO 8601’s date format, YYYY-MM-DD, puts an end to any frustrating situation that could be caused by a misunderstanding, especially in a business context. You won’t go to a meeting in the wrong date, or buy those materials when the date is unclear. In ISO 8601’s format, 06/09/17 becomes 2017-09-06, and that’s it.

Need to express dates? Think about this perfect date.

I’ve been broken,

I’ve been beat down

So full of shame and doubt

Been from the mountain, down to rock bottom

More times than I can count

But we were born to be great

Don’t just throw it away

(…)

Live another day

— Memphis May Fire

O meu, o seu… o nosso melhor não é o mesmo todos os dias. Hoje ele pode ser de um jeito, ontem pode ter ficado num patamar mais baixo, melhor que o de anteontem e pior do que ele será amanhã. E tudo bem, tudo certo, a vida é assim mesmo.

Como na música do Memphis May Fire que eu citei acima, você pode até apanhar, se quebrar e ter dúvidas, mas nunca deve se esquecer de que nasceu para coisas grandiosas, e que viver outro dia sempre vale a pena.

Minha avó era costureira das boas, e durante muitos anos dar aulas de costura foi o que ela fez para criar minha mãe e meus dois tios no interior do estado de São Paulo.

Morando com minha mãe depois que ela e meu pai se casaram, tive oportunidade de ver ela costurando em casa: fazia roupas pra fora e roupas pra mim e minha irmã também. Visitava as lojas de tecido na nossa cidade e comprava metros de pano com os quais produzia suas obras de arte. Me lembro especialmente dos fantásticos pijamas de flanela que ela criava pra gente e que eram tão quentinhos no inverno.

Saudades da minha avó.

Fast forward to 2022. Em busca de alguém que pudesse reformar uma camisa social de manga longa que eu adoro, para transformá-la em camisa de manga curta, encontrei uma costureira no bairro vizinho, com quem deixei a camisa.

Hoje fui buscar a camisa e, enquanto falava com a costureira, contei pra ela sobre a minha avó, e sobre como eu admiro quem sabe costurar.

Ela me disse algo que é a mais pura verdade: praticamente ninguém mais se interessa por aprender a costurar, e em 20 anos ou menos, a profissão dela e da minha avó terá praticamente desaparecido.

“No futuro”, ela disse, “as crianças de hoje mal saberão trocar a resistência de um chuveiro, que dirá saberem costurar”.

Concordei. E deixei mais três camisas para reformar e buscar na semana que vem.

Saudades da minha avó.