The Limits of Knowing

By Janita Le Grange

Last week, during one of our regular check-ins, the Mayor confessed something to me.

“I am not sure how Pineapple 25 will come together…” he admitted.

Without hesitating, I told him, “Don’t worry. I will do what I did last time, and then we’ll take it from there.”

It wasn’t a lack of desire or care on his part—or mine. It was simply the reality of life. Between a million time constraints, endless to-do lists, and schedules that seem determined to stretch past our human capabilities, the clock always seems to be ticking faster than we can type.

A lot of people reading this page might not realize just how much behind-the-scenes work goes into producing The Pineapple. It takes time. It takes patience. Above all, it takes a genuine amount of love and care to bring these pages to life every single week.

There are still many technical levers I need to learn how to pull entirely on my own. For now, we have a working system: I do my half, the Mayor does his half, and the machine keeps turning. (Though if the Mayor ever decides to take a real vacation, I’ll be in proper trouble—but don’t worry, you’ll still get a wonderful issue!)

All of this brought me back to this week’s theme: The Limits of Knowing.

I spent days asking myself what that phrase actually means. What are the limits of what we know? And then, as usually happens, my son provided the answer.

He was sitting at the table doing his math homework, radiating absolute, unshakeable confidence.

“I know how to do this,” he announced, assuring me that he didn’t need any help or teaching because he already knew everything.

He then proceeded to get the answers completely wrong.

He didn’t fail because he lacked capability; he made mistakes because he was so sure of what he knew that he stopped paying attention. But in doing it wrong, he stumbled into a brilliant life lesson: You can never know too much. There is always room to learn, to adjust, and to grow.

The only way we ever push past our limits is by leaning into curiosity and refusing to stop asking questions.

• How do I fix this toilet?
• How do I light a fire from scratch?
• How can I do this task faster, or smarter, or better?

This instinct started millions of years ago. Without relentless curiosity, human civilization wouldn’t exist as it does today.

Imagine an early human wandering the earth ages ago and spotting a bright orange fruit hanging from a tree. Would you eat it? Would you pause and ask yourself if it was safe?

Someone tried it. It was delicious. Mission accomplished.

Someone else tried a wild mushroom. It was poisonous. They didn’t make it. But did the rest of the tribe learn from that mistake? Absolutely. Will we eat that specific mushroom again? Definitely not. Mission accomplished. (And a silent note of gratitude to the poor soul who sacrificed himself to teach humanity a valuable lesson: not everything in the forest is a snack.)

Do we have limits? Yes. Can we grow beyond those limits? Also yes.

Is compiling The Pineapple easy? In theory, yes. But turning a collection of thoughts, stories, and ideas into something meaningful takes time. It takes love. And at the end of the week, despite the full schedules and the steep learning curves, we are always thrilled to share the final result with you.

Welcome to Issue 25.

May we all be brave enough to admit what we don’t know—and curious enough to find out anyway.