© Elliot Essman 2005. All rights reserved.

These pages contain the complete 2005 revised text of Building Yourself, public speaking trainer Elliot Essman's guide to living the successful life.

Elliot Essman Public Speaking Training
Building Yourself Table of Contents
Previous Section - Next Section

• Sixty years ago I knew everything; now I know nothing; education is a progressive discovery of our own ignorance. Will Durant (1885–1981)

I am firmly convinced that you cannot begin to know what you're doing until you first, at least at some point, have the conviction that you know nothing about the subject. That means your mind is a sponge, ready to learn. In no area of life is this more applicable than the area of love.

I used to give the definitive lecture series on this important subject aboard luxury cruise liners. Now I know a lot better. Now I know that I know nothing about love. Which is why I'm writing and you're reading. Because you might not know yet that you know nothing.

The adult with experience is way ahead of the young person here. The young person combines hope with the assumption that he or she knows everything already. You know the feelings and passions coursing through your veins now. What else is there? How could anything else be more real than what you feel now?

People change and a young person's judgment is rarely the best. If you're a young person you may disagree. You may believe older people just don't understand, as if they weren't once young. Fine. Go ahead and make trouble for yourself while you're still young enough to know everything.

It's sad, very sad, but you have to learn to shy away from and mistrust that wonderful feeling. If you do enjoy it, enjoy it for what it is. Don't puff it up into something it's not.

Accepting that you know nothing means you respect the power of love. You've got to respect that power if you want to harness it for positive achievements.

Back in the olden days, people rarely married for love. If they wanted romance, they picked up a novel. Marriages were more often arranged by families, often quite intelligently. While more of the arranged marriages of the past worked than do the spontaneous marriages of today, we tend to look down on that old custom. We shouldn't. The arranged marriage is a great idea. Only now you can't count on your family to be wise enough to do it for you. You've got to do the arranging yourself. What that means is accepting that you know nothing, then coming to know yourself, your tempera­ment, your needs and goals. It's all part of acting rationally in an area where most people don't.