Discover! Explore! Learn!

View from the Eiffel. The boundless Earth. 

The Baby Instinct

When you were a baby or a toddler, the world is a wondrous place. You seek to peek through holes, dig at nooks and crannies, climb high and low to seek different perspectives of the world. The moment we wake up, we began exploring, searching and unconsciously learning about this world.

Sometimes, this little explorations leads to great stuff like discovering a can of candies, or it could lead to disaster which culminated into a hard landing onto the unyielding ground. But despite that, we continued exploring and discovering. Our enthusiasm never wanes. I can attest to that as my little 10 month old baby Gerald has unlimited energy and is relentless on his attacks on things that are within his grasp.

This poem “ the Elephant’s Child” by Rudyard Kipling illustrate the curiosity of the child but also illustrate the preoccupied adult mind

I KEEP six honest serving-men

(They taught me all I knew);

Their names are What and Why and When

 And How and Where and Who.

I send them over land and sea,

I send them east and west;

But after they have worked for me,

I give them all a rest.

I let them rest from nine till five,

For I am busy then,

As well as breakfast, lunch, and tea,

For they are hungry men.

But different folk have different views;

I know a person small—

She keeps ten million serving-men,

Who get no rest at all!

She sends'em abroad on her own affairs,

From the second she opens her eyes—

One million Hows, two million Wheres,

And seven million Whys!

The Elephant's Child  

I am Busy

We grew up. We graduated and left school. We assume that our academic lives are over. We dive headlong into our careers and the industries which we are in. We learn all we can learned about our work and the industry. We become experts in our fields. Some will continue learning about their trade their entire life. Some will get complacent and stopped learning. After all, they are already the experts.

For example, a person who is an accountant, he had worked in his trade for decades. He has passed all his professional papers and he has climbed to the peak of his position in the company. He is the guru. He teaches but no longer needs to learn much more. Just an occasional update will do. He is successful in his trade, he is well respected and comfortable.

Now, what is wrong with this picture? You will ask. Life is complete.

I disagree. There is room for improvement. Much much room for improvement.

Well, how many times have we said to ourselves the following statements.

“I am not familiar with Economics.”

“ I have no knowledge on how to paint the walls of my house. “

“I have no idea how my smartphone connects to the

Wi-Fi, someone else configured for me. “

“Where is Luxembourg?”

#HalfTruths

Or worse. Unjustified judging statements:

“Eating meat destroys the environment”

“all non-organic food is full of pesticides”

“This is a poor man’s district, it is very dangerous here.”

“Climate Change is a conspiracy theory, made to take away our jobs”

“Islam is the cause of terrorism”

One of the biggest problems with maturity is that it tends to make adults feel they already knew it all. They stopped learning, stopped questioning and stopped discovering. They simply brush it off as I am too busy to learn things outside my trade or my environment. Too busy. Too tiring. Too complicated.

This is a Huge World

There are many things that we can learn in this world, and there is a constant need for us to question and to discover. Look out of the window and you see blue skies and leaves swirling in the wind. Why is the sky blue? Why do the leaves swirl? Doesn’t wind blow in one direction?

As we learn, the more we discover, more questions are generated and we learn even more. This is how we grow and become intelligent. I am not saying we should go out of the way to learn complicated subjects like astrophysics or DNA computation.

Mindfulness

I am saying there is a need to learn about your immediate environment, your society, and of your love ones.

Someone can say that he is an expert in x subject and yet he has no inkling that his son’s ambition  was to be a pilot.

We walk through the same path to our office everyday but never notice that there is an old man who sits at the park next to the path and plays the harmonica.

We drive our cars everyday but has no knowledge where the spare tyre is.

We need to be mindful. We need to learn about our world, and we need to learn from babies. I read from the news today that Facebook is using a new software to guard against fake news. But no amount of software will be as powerful as in an inquiring, learned mind.

Hence, I urge all to Learn! Explore! Discover!