Understanding How Something Works is the First Step to Fixing it

I have always been someone who is fascinated by figuring out how things work.  That has led to a number of occasions where things didn't necessarily fit back together as well as they did to begin with, but you have got to take some risks if you are every going to learn anything.  Now the most obvious form that this takes is with mechanical and electronic objects.  My grandparent's barnyard was full of interesting items, from motorcycles and go-carts to farm equipment.  With the other side of the family, it was things like circuit breakers, appliances, or plumbing.  A lot of ideas learned from doing that got tested and implemented with my extensive collection of Legos.  As I got into high school, I started toying with computers and figuring out how they worked, both hardware and software.  And then I started networking them together, and connecting cameras and televisions.  This eventually led to my career in media technology, as the guy who knows how everything works, from camera lenses to phone systems, and tape decks to mail servers.

But "everything" is a bit of an exaggeration.  The same principle of needing to understand how something works before you can fix it can be applied to many other areas in life.  Not understanding how your mind works can prevent you from fixing certain habits or overcoming fears.  Not understanding how other people work can make it difficult to fix or improve friendships.  Not understanding how the spiritual world works can make it nearly impossible to fix spiritual issues.

Now every once in a while you may be able to "fix" something that you don't understand, if you keep trying different things at random.  But you usually run a risk of making things worse instead, if you don't know what you are doing.  For the more important things in life, I don't want to go shooting in the dark, hoping that things I am doing are improving my situation.  I want to understand what I should be doing and why.

The first thing I do when I see something new is try to figure out how it works.  With physical objects, you figure that out by observing the individual pieces or taking them apart.  It is less straightforward to do the same thing with ideas and concepts, but there may be something to gain from taking a similar approach.  That is what I am attempting to do here, examining new ideas one piece at a time.

While I may know how to fish out a video cassette stuck in a tape deck, or troubleshoot a fibre-channel storage network, I don't know how to fix everything.  So I just try to keep learning how everything works, and it seems wise to focus my attention on areas I know need fixing.