The attempt of understanding

     While reading up on recent hacking heists, grand plans, and just general hacking-esque topics is very much a fun pass time, I often find myself completely lost in the content and jargon. Understanding the elementary is easy, like references to simple concepts involving databases, actual code, and scripts, but most of it is just fancy words that sound cool to pronounce in my head. ICMP ping flood code using sockets in C – Linux? Hash? SAM? So many ideas and things that I've never heard of or learned much of, yet people have spent years upon years dealing with and knowing of these things! In a case like this, it's simple to get frustrated and just give up, acknowledging the now steeper learning curve without attempt. 
However, is it a steep learning curve?
Is it too difficult to get integrated into this niche of technology?
I've been debating these questions with myself for a while, because I often see books that act as "intros to hacking", when they really just focus on one form of hacking or one style. If that's the case with trying to learn, then it is shaping up to be a big waste of time. Nights upon nights upon years would be wasted in trying to learn all there is to be "introduced" to hacking. 
I guess, now would be a good place to ask, "What IS hacking?"

1. A rough, irregular cut made by hacking.

2. A tool, such as a hoe, used for hacking.

3. A blow made by hacking.

4. A rough, dry cough.

None of these seem to be what we're looking for (thefreedictionary.com), so what IS hacking?! Actual hacking, or the believed concept of it, looks like it exists in a limbo of obscurity, where it can't be defined yet has a definition. What do we do now? What do I do now? Do I conclude this blog post with some changed outlook on something, in such a way that it sounds like I'm content with focusing on just a single aspect of the entity "hacking"? Hell no! I shouldn't be content with coming out of this with what I didn't want, because I want to learn more about hacking! knowledge is so frustrating, because even though it is what controls the world and everything believed, it seems impossible to come by.