The things you shouldn’t know

You know that saying, “it’s all fun and games until someone gets hurt”? Well, it’s true for every age, and all contexts.

Happiness comes in waves. But like love and pain, it comes unexpectedly and leaves the same way.

The key to being happy – and most of all serene – is acknowledging that you yourself and you alone are responsible for that precious feeling. You’re the only one who can control your feelings even if most times it doesn’t seem so easy or plausible to do.

It’s a magical and refreshing sensation to allow yourself to get carried away in the moments. Those instances that take your breath away, that have you tearing with laughter so much that your abs hurt. Those glimpses of time you look back on and smile nostalgically.

But there is always that inexplicable – demonic – hunch that nothing is so perfect; and it won’t last.

So what do you do when you see something you shouldn’t have? What if you notice a message you shouldn’t be aware of? Or overhear a conversation you weren’t meant to? How do you “un-know” things you shouldn’t know? How do you press “undo” on life events?

It’s mindblowing how emotions can change in a millisecond. How your entire perspective can alter by knowing something you shouldn’t. How everything moves from one extreme to another simply because of a differentiation of facts. It’s as quickly as clouds of rain form in a clear blue sky and hail begins to pour.

But that you can’t really control.

Can you?

Or is it there to show you something? Because often things happen to remind you what you deserve and to rethink where you are and what you’re devoting your energy and time on. Is it worth it if you’re not feeling happy, appreciated and valued?

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A magic herb

© Dale Rogerson

It was the image she held most prominently from the village house: the stone walls on which a large braid of garlic hung.

She found it amusing that tourists were always interested in this tradition of theirs. And she enjoyed her grandmother always having something new and interesting to tell them.

A pungent herb, garlic is one of the oldest cultivated plants, worshipped by Egyptians as a god and used as a currency.

But its most widespread ‘use’ was to ward off the evil eye, to attract good luck, as well as to make you strong and bring you courage.

Also part of Friday Fictioneers

Professor-prompts

“Not everyone can do everything. Because it is as simple a fact that you can’t be good at many things. You can adequately do a lot, but only expertly do a few”.

He clearly remembered his professor’s words since the first day of college.

He was investing time to gain the knowledge required to specialise in one specific sector.

However, in an age of multitasking and in a labour market that sought individuals with a range of skills, he found the prompt contradictory.

How could you focus on one thing alone when the world was asking you to know more?

His professor was the one who offered the reply.

“The more specific knowledge you possess, the greater ability you have in comprehending a situation and offering solutions others cannot see”.

He then handed him a quote from a famous scientist. It said: “A smattering of everything is worth little. It is a fallacy to suppose that an encyclopaedic knowledge is desirable. The mind is made strong, not through much learning, but by the thorough possession of something” (Louis Agassiz).

“Never stop learning. Seek knowledge on everything and anything. But know what to invest on and specialise on something in particular. That will make you stand out. And it will make you sought-after and marketable”.

A day of discovery

©Roger Bultot

It was a day they had taken off work, one of the few they could ‘steal’ during this period. They decided to spend it productively: visiting a museum. She was convinced that no one could change their future or better manage their present if they could not understand where they had come from and what had happened in the past. “We have a rich history and it is worth exploring”. He was persuaded.

The day turned out to be a discovery of things he never even knew existed. And that was more than enough to change his entire life perspective.

 

Also part of Friday Fictioneers

Stretching your mind

Why do we learn new things? Why are we even interested in something we know nothing about and may possibly not affect us?

We learn because it is how we grow. It is why as children we are so easily excited about almost everything, regardless of how nonsense it may later seem to us as adults.

There are many types of learning, for example, targeted learning simply to pass an exam; specialised learning to become experts in one (or only a few) specific areas; and broader life-long learning that never stops.

“Education is the progressive discovery of our own ignorance” (Will Durant). It is how we find our place in the world and how we can discover new ways to make things better.

Indeed, as Benjamin Franklin said, “being ignorant is not so much a shame, as being unwilling to learn”. We should want to learn. We should desire to broaden our perspectives and widen our horizons. We should be willing to engage in more talk than just things we know much about.

 “The capacity to learn is a gift; the ability to learn is a skill; the willingness to learn is a choice” – Brian Herbert

The wisdom of an organised life

Sophie and Lisa were twins. But they could not be more different. Sophie was the person who liked to have things in order. To make a plan or a list and try to stick to each as much as possible. She set priorities, ambitions, targets, goals and was thrilled with always trying something new. She was the person who was bored at doing nothing. Lisa, on the other hand, was the exact opposite. If she could, she would sit doing nothing all day. Her motto was to go with the flow. She was completely disorganised, often forgetting things that needed to be done and leaving everything for the last minute.

The problem with the latter type of people is that they don’t have any stress. Actually, they are the ones who cause the former ones all sort of anxiety problems.

It usually works like this: when Sophie can’t organise her schedule because Lisa never knows what her programme is until the very last minute, it is Sophie who gets stressed, irritated, angered and who rushes to change things to accommodate the other’s recklessness.

But no matter how much Sophie complained and lectured over how organisation and planning is needed, Lisa never paid attention. She preferred to do it her way because it always worked out in the end. She never cared to acknowledge, however, that the reason things worked out was because Sophie made the necessary effort to make everything right.

It is a shame that it is the organised people who are the ones that keep the world spinning, yet the disorganised-laid-back ones are always getting all the credit.

“Science is organised knowledge. Wisdom is organised life” – Immanuel Kant

Smart and wise

Idealists believe that all of us have the power to change the world. It is how we use that hidden strength that affects everything. It is how we cultivate our mind and lives that determines how smart we become. There is always something extra to appreciate in people who try to learn more every day. Who you see are making an effort to improve themselves. To develop their knowledge, their skills and, ultimately, their lives.

“A smart man only believes half of what he hears. A wise man knows which half” (Jeff Cooper).

It is easy to recognise these people. They are the ones who don’t care much about social media gossip, who prefer knowledge quizzes over time-wasting ‘candy-crash-type’ games. The ones who are curious about the world and genuinely want to learn. The ones who constantly try to find new challenges to engage with because they know that this is how we grow. The ones who get bored easily, who can’t sit still, who fidget often but also stay quiet a lot. They are the ones who can get lost in a book or have their attention distracted by an endless trail-quest for information online. They are those who get excited about the little things and who emit a childish energy when it comes to things they are passionate about.

People who use their brains more tend to be happier, healthier and more active.

They are the ones you should seek to have beside you. Because they are those who make you want to become better too, to learn more things and to share that energy within which lies the power to change the world.

Finding new worlds

Learning a language is like opening up your mind to new worlds. Because if you can train your brain to think, read, speak, communicate in more than one language, you are pretty much ready to open yourself up to anything: new cultures, new ways of thought, new people, new traditions, new…everything. Languages open a door to another world. And this is no exaggeration.

People who love to read, love to learn. They are the people who can not sit still for too long. They are too restless to understand what it means to literally do ‘nothing’. They are the people who will be constantly seeking new things to do, new activities to keep their mind occupied with. The ones whose brain is always plugged, associating everything with anything and searching for more things to do, even before finishing previous pending ones. These are the people who are active learners, who read things and try to find something worthwhile to get out of them and who will make use of their new knowledge as soon as they can. These are the people who make learning seem like a game. And these are the same people who have a talent in learning, especially languages.

For some, it is easy learning a new language. It is like playing a game – you learn new words, new grammar, new phrases; you hear people talk in a different way; and you obtain another way of looking at the world. Your perspective changes because you become even smaller in a world that is so vast. What changes is that you can now communicate with a few more people in it.

Learning languages are essential. Because it makes us acknowledge that there is so much more out there for us than the narcissistic walls in which we confines ourselves. If we open up our minds to new things, we will create the new opportunities and a worthy future we so strive to find.

Teaching how to disassemble the chaos

She screamed something incomprehensible, slammed her hands on the table, sturdily got up and left the room. If there were a door, she would have slammed it in anger.

He remained staring at the empty seat. Motionless. Unreactive. He had become accustomed to such bursts of anxiety, as he called them. He knew that she would soon blow off steam and come to realise that he was right all along. But that was something she should do on her own. She needed the space to calm down and process it all. He knew she could do more. She just had to believe it too.

She soon returned embarrassed but full of thirst for more. He had succeeded in awakening her desire to improve. To reach the potential he had seen in her from the very first day.

She loved ice-skating. It was the perfect combination of dance, expression and imagination. And on the ice, she felt more liberated than ever. It brought some tranquility to her otherwise chaotic life. Because no matter what went on at home, during her busy schedule, or in the world in general, on that ice rink she forgot it all, and got lost in the music, allowing it to drift her away, into a parallel universe, a utopia.

She was a smart girl, craving knowledge, demonstrating a general interest in everything that surrounds us, and with a fantasy as large and open as her heart.  She generally respected her teachers, especially those who inspired her and taught her to love learning. Those who showed her where to look, but left her to see things for herself. The ones who taught her to be critical of everything she heard, and, no matter what, to always try and improve; to compete, not with others, but with herself.

But the one who she loved the most was her ice-skating teacher. He was the once who acted as a mentor, a guide, a psychotherapist, a friend, a family member. He was so much more than a teacher and that is why she could so freely unleash every emotion in front of him. Because she knew he would understand. And he would support her either way.

Like Albert Einstein had said, “it is the supreme art of the teacher to awaken joy in creative expression and knowledge”. Because it is a fact that the (right) teachers are the ones who create all other professions, the ones who inspire you to be the best you can be, and to find some order in the chaos that is our world.

 

Also part of Daily Prompt: Chaos

Aggressively inarticulate

It’s hard to find the right words. Especially when you’re in a hurry or rushing to get it all off your chest, you end up mumbling something stupidly incoherent that sounds like gibberish making no sense whatsoever. Then you sit and think of all the comebacks you could have said and beat yourself down for not demonstrating more verbal authority when you had the chance.

But is this a millennial problem? That we don’t really know what we’re saying? That we have lost any access to an extensive vocabulary, preferring instead to repeat nonsense words such as “like” and “you know”, filling up our phrases with…well, nothing really. We make it all sound “cool” and “hip”, but in essence, it means absolutely nothing. Rather, it all reflects the uncertainty that has dwindled upon us. And the dilemma of having nothing to say, or simply not knowing how to express it.

A fantastic kind of stand-up comedy presentation makes fun of exactly this, and eloquently argues that “we are the most aggressively inarticulate generation to come along since, you know, a long time ago”.

We no longer speak with authority, because we have none. We are instead overwhelmed with too many choices and selections; so many that we have ourselves become indecisive and unsure of even the slightest of things.

We have lost touch with the joy of learning independently. Of being able to handle things without computerized assistance. To the extent that some jobs won’t even hire you if you declare that you don’t need the aid of technology to do something, but can handle it very well on your own. Is it so absurd that you yourself possess the knowledge someone else fed into a machine to do it for you? Sure, it helps, but what about the satisfaction of accomplishing things on your own?

Being articulate isn’t just about finding the right words, and knowing how to spell them correctly. It’s about the clout that comes from demonstrating a higher level of intellect and the ability to expand your own horizons.