Don't know don't know

My father used to draw this diagram, a box with four quadrants. In the upper left he'd write, "don't know that you know". The upper right, "know that you know". Lower left you'd find, "don't know that you don't know". And finally in lower right would be, "know that you don't know". The idea being that we spend time bouncing between those four quadrants throughout our lives. Some times we know that we know, like one plus one is two, and sometimes we don't know that we don't know, like she's never going to leave me.

But, three of those boxes, they don't actually exist. They are illusions that we create for ourselves when we are firmly planted in the don't know don't know quadrant. Which is where most of us will spend our entire lives.