I’ve been aware for some time that I don’t really know anything.

This is not to say I’m uneducated. I am, by anyone’s standards, a reasonably well-educated person. I didn’t necessarily set the world of academia on fire (neither in a metaphorical sense, which is a shame, nor a literal sense, which is to my credit) but I have a solid set of qualifications for every milestone up to masters level, which is definitely not nothing.

But I maintain I know nothing.

And the more time I spend trying to accumulate knowledge, the more I truly understand that I really don’t understand very much at all.

Which I think, all things considered, is quite a sensible conclusion to arrive at.

If I thought I knew everything, I think I would be capable of great stupidity, whereas my certainty that I don’t know anything keeps me fairly grounded.

It is, after all, not reasonable to know everything. Or even a lot of things.

There is simply too much to know.

I have never had the voracious appetite for knowledge that is exemplified by Little Proclaims, and, to a large extent, her mother.

Mini Proclaims, who at the age of four is already proving to be no slouch when it comes to her ability to learn, is showing traits of her father insofar as she doesn’t so much view knowledge as the intrinsic reward, so much as the key to a door she wants to open.

But Little Proclaims just likes to know stuff, and frankly, for an 8-year-old, she seems to know an awful lot. On some topics she absolutely leaves me for dust.

And yet, it would be unreasonable to expect my daughter to know more than me. I have a 39-year advantage when it comes to the accumulation of knowledge, so she’ll take a while to catch me up. She will catch me up one day though, and then overtake me.

I have a five-year advantage over Mrs Proclaims, which at our respective ages is essentially nothing, and she has long since left me behind.

But she can’t beat me at Trivial Pursuit, because while she may accelerate away to getting her first four ‘cheese’ before I have registered one, she can never answer the questions on sport or popular culture, and so I always catch her up, because I can answer some questions on science, literature, geography and history eventually.

And few people can match me on my knowledge of 90s action movies, so the pop culture cheese takes care of itself. Throw in my tendency to zone out to sport from the comfort of my armchair and it’s always a 6-4 victory to me.

But she does know more than me.

And yet, even my academically high-achieving wife doesn’t really know anything much.

And I’m just saying, if we know nothing and we broadly know we know nothing, why do so many people seem these days to be certain about things?

Or is that me misreading the situation?

It’s quite possible.

I’ve been aware for some time that I don’t really know anything.