Striving Towards Excellence

-Karthik Gurumurthy

The Borrowed Library of Your Mind

Think of all the knowledge you have like borrowed books from a vast library. You didn’t write them. You didn’t create the ideas inside them. You’re just collecting and reading what countless others have written before you.

The moment this truth really sinks in, something amazing happens: pride melts away like ice in the sun.

Every fact you know, every skill you’ve mastered, every insight you’ve gained—someone taught you, showed you, or wrote it down for you to discover. Even your most original thoughts are built on foundations laid by others. You’re standing on the shoulders of giants, as Newton said, and those giants were standing on the shoulders of others before them.

You’re a Tiny Dot in an Infinite Universe

The truly wise understand something profound: they’re microscopic specks in a vast, ancient universe, holding a few drops from an endless ocean of knowledge.

Consider this: the universe is 13.8 billion years old. Humanity has existed for maybe 300,000 years—a blink. Written history goes back about 5,000 years—less than a blink. And your life? Maybe 80 years if you’re lucky. In cosmic terms, you barely exist.

And yet, in that brief flash of existence, some people strut around like they’ve figured it all out. They’ve read a few books, learned a skill or two, achieved some success, and suddenly they think they’re masters of the universe.

The wise see through this illusion. They know that for every question they can answer, there are a million they can’t. For every book they’ve read, there are millions they’ll never have time for. For every experience they’ve had, there are billions they’ll never encounter.

This realization doesn’t make them depressed—it makes them humble. And humility, paradoxically, is what opens the door to true wisdom.

Life Is a Short-Term Rental

Here’s another truth that strips away pride: none of this is permanent. Not your knowledge, not your achievements, not even your body.

You’re a temporary resident in this world, renting space for a few decades. You came in with nothing, and you’ll leave with nothing. Everything you’ve accumulated—knowledge, wealth, status, possessions—stays behind when you go.

So why spend your brief stay puffing yourself up with pride? Why waste energy positioning yourself above others or protecting your ego? Why not just enjoy this temporary experience peacefully, learn what you can, share what you know, and treat others with kindness?

The ancient Stoics understood this. Marcus Aurelius, emperor of Rome—literally the most powerful man in the world at his time—wrote in his private journal: “You could leave life right now. Let that determine what you do and say and think.” He knew that despite his power, he was just passing through, same as everyone else.

The More You Learn, The Less You Know

Here’s the beautiful paradox of knowledge: the more you actually learn, the more you realize how much you don’t know.

When you’re ignorant, you think you know a lot. It’s called the Dunning-Kruger effect—people with limited knowledge in a field dramatically overestimate their expertise. They’ve climbed a small hill and think they’ve conquered Everest.

But when you really dig into a subject—when you study deeply, read widely, seek to truly understand—you start seeing the immensity of what you don’t know. The hill you climbed? It was just the first bump in a mountain range that stretches to the horizon.

Socrates, considered one of the wisest men who ever lived, famously said: “I know that I know nothing.” He wasn’t being falsely modest. He genuinely understood that compared to all there is to know, his knowledge was essentially zero.

And that’s okay. In fact, it’s liberating. When you accept that you’ll never know everything, you stop pretending. You stop posturing. You become genuinely curious instead of defensively protective of your limited knowledge.

Questions become more interesting than answers. “I don’t know” becomes an acceptable response instead of something to hide. Other people become teachers instead of competitors.

This is what keeps truly intelligent people humble and endlessly curious. They’re not threatened by what they don’t know—they’re excited by it.

Those Who Brag Often Stumble

There’s an old saying: those who brag about climbing mountains often slip on pebbles.

Pride makes you careless. When you think you’ve mastered something, you stop paying attention. You stop being careful. You stop learning. And that’s when you make mistakes.

History is full of examples: businesses that dominated their industries and then collapsed because they got arrogant. Athletes at the top of their game who stopped training hard and lost everything. Empires that thought they were invincible and crumbled within a generation.

On a personal level, it’s the expert who stops studying and gets surpassed by hungrier students. It’s the successful person who thinks they can’t fail and makes reckless decisions. It’s the know-it-all who won’t listen to others and misses obvious solutions.

Arrogance is a blindfold. Humility is clear vision.

True Wisdom Whispers; It Doesn’t Shout

Here’s how you can tell the difference between genuine wisdom and fake expertise:

Genuine wisdom is quiet. It listens more than it speaks. It asks questions. It says “I don’t know” when it doesn’t know. It’s open to being wrong. It learns from everyone, even people with less formal education or experience.

Fake expertise is loud. It dominates conversations. It has all the answers. It can’t admit uncertainty. It gets defensive when challenged. It only learns from approved sources and credentialed experts.

Real masters don’t need to announce their mastery—it shows in their work, their questions, their humility. Pretenders announce their credentials constantly because without the announcement, no one would know.

Think about the most brilliant people you’ve ever met. Were they arrogant and boastful? Or were they curious, humble, and genuinely interested in learning from others?

The wisest people I’ve encountered have been the most willing to say “I don’t know,” “I was wrong,” or “Tell me more about that.” Their confidence came from knowing they didn’t need to pretend—their actual knowledge spoke for itself.

So what do you do with this understanding?

Stay curious. Approach every day like you’re a student, because you are. There’s always more to learn, always someone who can teach you something.

Stay humble. Remember you’re just borrowing knowledge for a brief time. You’re not the author, just a reader passing through.

Stay open. The moment you think you’ve figured something out completely is the moment you stop growing.

Share freely. Since the knowledge isn’t really yours anyway, why hoard it? Give it away. Teach others. The more you share, the more you learn.

Listen more. Everyone knows something you don’t. Everyone has experiences you haven’t had. Even the people you think you’re smarter than can teach you something if you’re humble enough to listen.

Accept uncertainty. You don’t need to have all the answers. “I don’t know, but I’d like to find out” is a perfectly respectable position.

Here’s what all this leads to: peace.

When you stop trying to prove how much you know, when you stop competing to be the smartest person in the room, when you stop defending your ego against every challenge—life becomes so much lighter.

You’re free to learn without pretense. Free to ask questions without embarrassment. Free to change your mind without shame. Free to say “I was wrong” without losing face.

Because you understand the fundamental truth: you’re a temporary visitor carrying borrowed knowledge through a vast universe you’ll never fully understand. And that’s not a tragedy—it’s an invitation to endless wonder.

True wisdom isn’t about how much you know. It’s about understanding how little you know, and being perfectly okay with that.

So collect your borrowed books. Enjoy your short-term rental. Stay curious. Stay humble. And let wisdom whisper through you, not shout from you.

That’s the path to genuine understanding. That’s the path to peace.