How do I Know what I Know?

I know that the sky is blue. I know that when it rains, dark clouds come. I know that the sun gives us heat. I know that without the sun, we’d die.

                All basic ideas, and yet all of them can be questioned. Do we really know that the blue I see is the same blue as another person sees? Do we know, for sure, that we would die if the sun was gone? Could we possibly create an artificial replacement?

                But questioning those things seems crazy. We have to accept some things. Otherwise we’d be asking questions every second of every day. We’d end up coming to the conclusion that we know nothing. And that’s not exactly a reassuring thought.

                So how do I know what I know? Most things I learned from my parents and I accept them. I accept that my name is Klaudia, that I wasn’t secretly adopted, that my birthday is April 21^st, and other basic things. But there are other things, things we could say are more complex. I know that hurting people is bad. I believe that because that’s what I’ve been told from the very beginning, and I know that the people around me have been told the same thing. I’ve also seen that nothing good come out of hurting people. We can get into the specifics of the differences of hurting innocent people versus people who supposedly deserved it, but the main idea is to not hurt people. We should try to forgive and move on. Some things can’t always be forgiven, but we shouldn’t live in the past. Everyone makes mistakes. Which leads to another thing that I know: nobody is perfect. I’ve been told this for as long as I can remember, but even taking a look around proves this. People may come close to perfect, but no one is actually perfect. I know that I am definitely not perfect and I don’t think anyone would call themselves perfect.

                That is how people learn what they know: from their parents, other adults, friends, and their own experiences. And yet nothing is concrete. That too is shown even in the process of typing this essay; I questioned every sentence I wrote and I realized that it really is true that we know almost nothing. Almost everything is an opinion. Someone might think it is okay to hurt people because of all they’ve been through. Someone might think that they are perfect. And who knows, maybe I really am secretly adopted?