Many, many times a day, I encounter an English word or perhaps a name/location/whatever which I don't immediately understand.
I then press a key on my keyboard which brings up a special search field on a localhost-hosted webpage. After I've inputted it there, I am able to middle-click various links, such as "Wikipedia" and "Wikitionary" (but many others as well, such as MobyGames if it's a video game or local map services). Then I read the resulting page(s) to get an idea of what it means, what it is, where it's located, etc.
Hopefully, it then sticks. But it seems like most things don't. I feel as if I've looked up certain words/phrases/things like this countless times over the years.
I'm approaching 40 years old, and it's basically impossible for me to read a few sentences without finding at least one such word/phrase which I have to look up in this manner. It really seems like this will never end; I will never be "fully learned", or even "reasonably learned". And it's not going to get easier to keep this in my head as I age...
I basically feel like a cheater/fraud. Imagine if this had been any time before the modern age, where I'd have to keep a whole library of books (plus constant updates) and slowly try to hunt down all these things. Most likely, I would not bother in most cases, or I wouldn't even be able to afford them in the first place. And many full phrases, or more obscure/slang sayings, probably would not exist in any book!
I feel as if I'm an uneducated fool who basically "backtracks" through life by looking things up, one by one, rather than having naturally learned these things as a child and growing up. It's like an unhealthy obsession rather than something which really feels like it "enriches" me; maybe I'm slowly getting a better view of the world, but I also feel as if I'm doing this way too late and in a bizarre manner. Even though I've streamlined this as much as possible, it's still a lot of work for me when it happens so frequently.
Do normal people know all of these words/expressions/whatever? Or do they just gloss over them and make assumptions about what they mean? I feel very stupid for constantly having to "look up" stuff, or even ask a question on Stack Exchange, which also happens a lot. I really wonder how there can be all these people out there in the world who seem to have accumulated endless knowledge. Did they spend their lives just plowing through books all day? (I probably would have if I had the ability to focus and knew how annoying it would be to constantly have to look things up.)
