You are what you consume

Most of us have in one way or another heard Ludwig Feuerbach’s famous quote “we are what we eat” and use this to guide our diet so that we don’t harm ourselves with our food.

But what if I told you that this quote doesn’t only cover diet?

Let’s use James and Lizzy as a case study.

(No hard feelings if your name is James or Lizzy, these are randomly picked names.)

James and Lizzy are classmates in a science class in high school and one day, their teacher gave them an assignment.

This assignment required them to read about a particular chemical compound and write a short note about their findings and submit their report a week later.

To handle this assignment, James stuck to the textbooks at the library and notes from his teacher while Lizzy made use of online resources and ebooks. 

After a week, both submitted their reports and although both made the research from credible sources, Lizzy’s was preferred.

Let me add that James is the smarter one between the two and is often found teaching Lizzy who was still catching up.

Now, why did Lizzy do better than James in this assignment?

It is because although James was inherently smart and had an intellectual advantage over Lizzy, his choice of research materials was limited compared to not-so-smart Lizzy’s choice of the internet.

This is where I’ll draw my lesson from.

Some of you might have already picked the message from this article but for the sake of others, I’ll point it out.

No matter how smart you are or you think you are, if you’re not exposed to any form of information, a dummy will ride you.

A genius in his field must carry out extensive research on a topic before he teaches it to another person because what he thinks he knows might be outdated at the time he is to teach.

We’re living in the jet age and modifications to already existing theories are made frequently.

So rather than wallow in self-importance and think that you’re still a prodigy in your field, broaden your knowledge bank and fill it with new knowledge as frequently as you can.

You can do this by reading books, following the lifestyle of those ahead of you, and trying out new things.

If you feel that you have more knowledge about a particular subject than is available for public consumption, feel free to spread it.

One of the best ways to learn is to teach, and you can’t be so sure that you know something if you can’t teach it to another person.

In whatever area of life you can think about, you are a product of what you consume.

If you don’t consume anything, you can’t be anything and if you consume bad stuff, well you should know your fate by now.

I’ll leave you to implement the words you’ve just heard as I depart to do the same.

There are no limits to learning so don’t create one for yourself.

Don’t forget to like this post and share it for others to see and learn.