Eyes Wide Open
It’s a curious thing how transformations occur in the human psyche, how the processes we encounter and repeat transform into unwavering certainty. God, I wish there were an easier way to express this idea; I’ve probably alienated a large swath of readers already.
But for those of you with courage enough to stay the course, I’ll do my best to break this idea down. When we’re young—too young to read, even—we begin the process of conscious learning by being read to, by illustrations that draw our attention, by learning A is for Apple (and here’s a nice picture of an apple) and B is for Ball (with amended picture), and so on. Then 24 letters later, we’ve reached the end of the alphabet and will do so again tomorrow and tomorrow. Then, one day, many tomorrows later, baby finds he/she can recite the alphabet in order without need of the book! We’re so proud of our little selves, huge smiles all around, a little dance maybe, and cookies & milk as the reward for a job well done! Yay!
And yeah… it’s effective. And in one way, it’s expansive—absorbing thoughts by reading what other people already know—but in another way, it’s restrictive. Not through any fault of the reading material, certainly, but by the metamorphosis that occurs in our heads. What’s the first utterance when seeking an answer to a question? “Look it up.” And in this regard, the advent of cell phones has been a blessing, a wealth of information at the touch of a few buttons. But the restrictive part arises when there’s no place to just look it up. We become creatures of habit where we only feel we learn when others feed us information.
What happens when we need to read that which hasn’t been written? What happens when we question the validity of an observation without corroboration by some expert or another? They’re not necessarily earth-shattering observations, but I’ll cite an easy one to get this ball rolling. (I mention this particular subject in my novel, so it comes easy). We all know that Vitamin D comes from sunlight. (and if you didn’t know, well… now you’ve read it, so you do know it). Spend all your time indoors and you’ll have a Vitamin D deficiency, requiring supplements to keep up this necessary vitamin in your body. But, if you spend too much time in the sunlight, you risk sunburn, blisters, and, in some extreme cases, skin cancer.
So, what does that tell you? It’s saying even good things need to be treated with moderation. It’s a simple enough lesson and wisdom that has been passed down through generations. The thing of it is, there are myriad lessons to be learned by virtue of our lives on Earth, lessons that aren’t quite so straightforward and that require some keen observation and a temperament to reflect upon those. I hope to touch on a few of those that have resonated with me in the hopes they resonate with you as well.
And that’s where this blog is going in upcoming issues. I’d love to have people chime in on their observations and the conclusions they’ve drawn. I believe it’ll make for lively banter and thought-provoking explorations. Maybe we’ll all begin to read things that aren’t written, hear the music that has never been played.
Etched in Stone
But for those of you with courage enough to stay the course, I’ll do my best to break this idea down. When we’re young—too young to read, even—we begin the process of conscious learning by being read to, by illustrations that draw our attention, by learning A is for Apple (and here’s a nice picture of an apple) and B is for Ball (with amended picture), and so on. Then 24 letters later, we’ve reached the end of the alphabet and will do so again tomorrow and tomorrow. Then, one day, many tomorrows later, baby finds he/she can recite the alphabet in order without need of the book! We’re so proud of our little selves, huge smiles all around, a little dance maybe, and cookies & milk as the reward for a job well done! Yay!
And yeah… it’s effective. And in one way, it’s expansive—absorbing thoughts by reading what other people already know—but in another way, it’s restrictive. Not through any fault of the reading material, certainly, but by the metamorphosis that occurs in our heads. What’s the first utterance when seeking an answer to a question? “Look it up.” And in this regard, the advent of cell phones has been a blessing, a wealth of information at the touch of a few buttons. But the restrictive part arises when there’s no place to just look it up. We become creatures of habit where we only feel we learn when others feed us information.
What happens when we need to read that which hasn’t been written? What happens when we question the validity of an observation without corroboration by some expert or another? They’re not necessarily earth-shattering observations, but I’ll cite an easy one to get this ball rolling. (I mention this particular subject in my novel, so it comes easy). We all know that Vitamin D comes from sunlight. (and if you didn’t know, well… now you’ve read it, so you do know it). Spend all your time indoors and you’ll have a Vitamin D deficiency, requiring supplements to keep up this necessary vitamin in your body. But, if you spend too much time in the sunlight, you risk sunburn, blisters, and, in some extreme cases, skin cancer.
So, what does that tell you? It’s saying even good things need to be treated with moderation. It’s a simple enough lesson and wisdom that has been passed down through generations. The thing of it is, there are myriad lessons to be learned by virtue of our lives on Earth, lessons that aren’t quite so straightforward and that require some keen observation and a temperament to reflect upon those. I hope to touch on a few of those that have resonated with me in the hopes they resonate with you as well.
And that’s where this blog is going in upcoming issues. I’d love to have people chime in on their observations and the conclusions they’ve drawn. I believe it’ll make for lively banter and thought-provoking explorations. Maybe we’ll all begin to read things that aren’t written, hear the music that has never been played.
Etched in Stone
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