About how much we know (or think we know)

The more I know, the more I know I don't know.

The less I knew, the more I thought I did know.

Have you ever noticed that some people are inclined to consider themselves experts on one particular subject or another with which, really, we'd say they have had very little experience.
When I was expecting my first baby, a lady I knew, who'd had one son, was very happy to give me all sorts of advice and, even worse, to frequently recount the rather grim experience she'd had of her one and only labour (which was why, I strongly suspect, this remained the case).
I have to say it made very little impression on me and I went into that procedure quite blithely, expecting it to be a bit of a doddle because I'd read the books and been to the classes and really thought I knew the score.
Needless to say, it didn't quite pan out as expected but I survived and even went on to have more children but never considered myself to be an expert in the matter of childbirth and was very loathe to give much advice to anyone unless asked. Those friends of mine with more than one child have mostly seemed to feel the same as I do.
Despite bringing up a family and surviving life thus far, there aren't many things on which I feel qualified to pronounce with authority; hence my opening mantra. (This isn't the case with opinions, you understand. I'm up there with the best of them in being more than happy to share those, as anyone who knows me will confirm; more's the pity, they'll probably add with a grimace!)
When you think that someone of the stature of Isaac Newton, I think it was, could write, "If I have seen further than most men, it is because I have stood on the shoulders of giants.", it behoves most of us to view our own knowledge as partial and limited.
The older I become, the more I cringe about some of the attitudes I spouted forth upon in my youth. I can only hope that my friends have as poor a memory as I have. If so, it may explain why they don't seem to hold it against me too much. (Maybe we could learn to see that as one of the blessings of getting older!)