The Difference Between Working and Understood

12/20/2025

Thought

There’s a big difference between something working and something understood. This week reminded me how often I mistake the two.

What happened

I had systems that were technically working - pfSense, Cloudflare Tunnel, SSH access - but I didn’t fully understand why they were working, or under what conditions they would stop working. When something broke, the fix wasn’t bout tweaking settings blindly; it was bout identifying which assumptions I had made without realizing it.

What changed

Once I slowed down and treated the problem like infrastructure instead of a bug, the solution became obvious. The firewall wasn’t “broken”. The system was behaving exactly as designed - just not as I assumed.

Why it matters

Understanding turns fixes into knowledge. Working systems are fragile if you don’t know why they work. Documentating the reasoning - not just the solution - is how I avoid relearning the same lessons later.

This blog exists to capture that gap.