The advantage of ignorance...

The important thing is being able to do things. And you don't necessarily have to have knowledge to do things: small babies can often swim, as can dogs; we learn to ride bikes, but the process then becomes automatic, without requiring thought.

I'm not going to write an essay about the reason why we are too caught up believing in the importance of knowledge, but I do say to would-be advocates that sometimes ignorance can be an advantage. Here are just three reasons:

1. shared learning with your advocacy partner is more empowering for them (in contrast to their professional support workers who 'know the answers' and can 'sort things out');
2. advocates work in such a wide variety of situations they can't possibly know all the answers, but we can certainly find ways through and make good results happen;
   
3. people are more ready to help you if you don't appear to be able to help yourself (as long as you speak to them nicely).

So, since I always think I should start as I mean to go on, ignorance seems to be a good place to be today. Because I don't really know exactly where I'm going with this blog, and I'm sure I will write some things that I won't be very sure about either. I have got some ideas of course, and I'm confident that I'll get stuff done.

So this is meant to be a place for me to explore ideas, and hopefully for you and others like you to explore them with me. I'm happy you're reading this, but please remember that I'm starting from igorance and I may not manage to get far beyond this, so please don't be offended, just help me find the right way...