The Trouble With Haru

When you know a piece of information, what are you going to do with it?

Of course, it depends on the value of the information. Some things can be practically applied now at the moment of acquirement, but some requires more polishing and such. But maybe the latter is just an excuse to not get a move on..

Specifically I wanted to vent about information not of intellectual nor spiritual value. How do you judge a piece of juicy gossip acquired along the day is worth the trouble of researching and analyzing?

With the heat on Malaysian political scenario and the nearly 90% updates on my Facebook related to nothing but politics (perhaps I should spring clean my contacts and lessen the number of political junkies. Seriously, we're sort-of family with a PAS activist in Malaysia but he was nowhere near the atrocities of some of my colleagues in Egypt. I don't know what risk factors Zaim was not exposed to.), an off-handed comment made a month ago by our ustaz came back to me and if I dig deeper, perhaps I will find a link between current issues and what will be unveiled in the future. Thus a clear meaning that will answer all the questions to what is really going on right now.

But then, what will happen? Will the information increase my piety in Him? Will it kick me up to spread the message of Allah especially to my targeted audience? Will it, at least, motivate me to study harder for the upcoming OSPE and End Round Exam for Public Health?

Usually, there's so much things I know that are more than exciting to dig around, but the only thing setting me back was my own laziness. This time, however..

Sherlock Holmes commented to Dr. Watson that he wish to forget a trivial fact the trusty doctor spared on him, simply because Holmes had no use of knowing it.

In A Study in Scarlet, Holmes claims he does not know that the Earth revolves around the Sun, as such information is irrelevant to his work. Directly after having heard that fact from Watson, he says he will immediately try to forget it.

He says he believes that the mind has a finite capacity for information storage, and so learning useless things would merely reduce his ability to learn useful things.

If it amounts to this much trouble, wouldn't it be easier to not know about it in the first place? Like when you're opting for a screening test, if the test is not cost-effective, you wouldn't do it. If the test is for a disease with no facilities nor treatment for management, there's no use of doing it in the first place. A simple principle of being efficient and not wasting your hard-earned resources.

I'm being vague, I know. And too much analyzing hinders action. And with my insufficient input (it's only my logical observation playing the content of this post, but I like to think it's very much guided by Allah, hehe), how would I know the conclusion I came up with is relevant?

But the very first question should have been; what is the standard for anything right or good I'm using?