Another word for Education is Exploration
“I have never let my schooling interfere with my education”, said Mark Twain. And it remains quite decent advice nowadays.
The magic of school education fades away so fast that your only consolation is that at least you’ve made enough friends with whom to share your misery.
Unlike adults, most kids are not taught how to deal with the boredom of school the same way we stoically tolerate our jobs and daily routines. By stoically I mean once a week visiting an occupational hypnotherapist or going to a bar and karaoke Friday night.
In the end, we are killing the most natural of all behaviors: Curiosity.
When I was a kid in my first years of school we were forced, in a patriotic effort, to proudly sing the national anthem in the mornings.
That display of dull patriotism only proved two things. First, kids cannot understand patriotism since they didn’t live long enough to even understand the concept of what a nation is. Second, certain things cannot be taught. Take complex virtues for example. It may well be lectured. To learn it, however, it must be put into practice.
In the same manner, curiosity can’t be forced upon you. It should be stimulated, but cannot be forced upon. Most folks confuse education with controlled, organized activities. In other words, busy-ness.
They forget one detail. We live in the 21st century. And pardon my French but “being busy” just sounds idiotic, antiseptic, and weak. “Stuck in the rat race” is a better word use for that.
Curiosity and exploration come naturally with kids. But there’s a natural flow to it that separates the healthy curious kid and the passive ones.
The first time my parents gave me a sketchbook and coloring pencils I was blown away. It just became my little world. My brothers and sisters and I dedicated hours and more hours drawing and reading comic books. We learned to appreciate a whole different way of communication through drawing and painting.
More often than not, all that takes for you to succeed in something is to understand that exploration is the key. Stimulation and engagement lead to exploration.
Have you ever heard or read something so impactful that made you look at life from a different perspective? One bit of information can create a whole upward spiral of practical, intentional, and conscious improvement.
A podcast, a film, a good book, or even good influences as friends and family.
When I think about growth, what always comes to mind are these two distinctive types:
Horizontal Growth and Vertical Growth. Or Inner growth and Outer Growth.
And this has nothing to do with business strategy.
Horizontal growth can be quantified, measured, and qualified with numbers and degrees, for instance, your age, weight or your social-economic status, or even your marital status.
Whereas Vertical growth is more subjective. It can well be described as spiritual or psychological growth.
If it were put in charts the horizontal axis would be steady, measuring age, time, wealth etc., however, the vertical axis would not be measurable.
Horizontal thinking is about comparison and accumulation, while vertical growth is quite difficult for most of us to understand for one reason.
We love numbers and statistics and comparing them.
In Le Petit Prince, Antoine De Saint-Exupery famously wrote that “l’essentiel est invisible pour le yeux”, and again and again the little prince is baffled at adults and their love for numbers:
“Quand vous leur parlez d’un nouvel ami, elle ne vous questionnent jamais sur l’essentiel”, he says. “Elles vous demandent: quell agê a-t-il?Combien a-t-il de frères?Combien pèse-t-il? Combien gagne son père?- Alors seulement elles croient le connaitre”.
How did we go from being healthy curious individuals to numbers’ maniacs?
Think of kids, their first years are all about exploration and input. They’re an apprentice. Until they play that role and they evolve into a different archetype, maybe a warrior or an explorer and hero, or even a lover then evolving to a parent or a mentor.
But there’s no correlation between outer growth and inner growth. One can be effortless, the other can take a lifetime.
And this particular quest requires Education, I mean, true active exploration.
“Man is most nearly himself when he achieves the seriousness of a child at play.” Heraclitus.
It’s incredible how kids can put their minds into something and keep positive energy at the first stages of the learning process. And they never compare themselves, until they enter school, where they learn inferiority complex and horizontal thinking.
College and schools are the modern Plato’s Cave.
Winston Churchill is a famous example of a leader who cultivated a child-like spirit. In his teenage years, he entered a military school, the Royal Military Academy. Churchill’s first experience with war was quite early on, besides his adventurous quest as a journalist for the Morning Post during the Second Boer’s War in 1899.
In World War I, Churchill’s big fiasco led him to his darkest time. From which he took advantage of, to study deeply and improve himself. Then he became a Prime Minister. Twice. He became a quite decent oil painter. His efforts in the World War II saved England and most of Europe from what looked like a fanatic, lunatic and demented fascist. And he did brick-lying too and wrote a number of books.
This is not a list of accomplishments. But a nice example of a man at his best.
Exploration needs to be discovered, it cannot be taught to an unmotivated learner.
“What old people say you cannot do, you try and find that you can”, Thoreau said.
There’s the idea that the new generation will do that which the old thought was impossible or failed to.
It has been this way for a long time.
The Egyptians, the Greeks, the Aztecs. They were true scientists. They’ve created hunting weapons, they knew natural medicine. They developed language systems. They deeply understood philosophy.
They’ve paved the way so we have the time to further explore the unknown or the less known.
“Old people did not know enough once, perchance, to fetch fresh fuel to keep the fire a-going; new people put a little dry wood under a pot, and are whirled round the globe with the speed of birds” , Thoreau again.
Exploration is in our genes, as natural as flying is for birds.
The reward is momentary. Many times the fixation for the reward can rob you of the “joie de vivre”.
In a recent interview for the Joe Rogan Experience when talking about getting the rights for his classic show, The Chappelle Show, Dave Chappelle said, “If you look at anything in life through the framework of money you’ll miss most of the picture”.
So does thinking and measuring life by gain and loss, advantage and disadvantage.
There’s a great passage in Steven Pressfield’s book, Virtues of War, in which Pressfield describes an argument between Alexander’s (The Great) soldiers and philosophers about monks taking sunbaths in public, preventing his party from crossing through the village.
“Who was more worthy to possess the right of way-Alexander or the gymnosophists?” one of Alexander’s men argued.
“This man has conquered the World! What have you done? The philosopher replied without an instant’s hesitation, ‘I have conquered the need to conquer the world.”
Alexander had bravely gained the world, while the sage took the interior voyage.
“Every man I meet is my master at some point, and in that, I learn from him” said Emerson.
And that’s Alexander’s attitude towards the gymnosophists.
As hypocritical as it seems, we need them both. Horizontal and vertical. They’re both parts of life. Then why do we live by such binary terms? Why do we pick one and neglect the other?
In that sense, we all must remain a student and seek and strive to see life as tridimensional. And embrace its height, its length and its depth. Its bright side as well as its dark side.
When I look back at how much I learned after finishing school I’m usually baffled and surprised.
And it gives me immense satisfaction to put into practice what I’ve learned and explore more and dig deeper. The burden of unrealistic tests and grades completely taken away. The idea of arriving at a certain degree and stopping exploring not even sound, because I know the ride never ends.
As Lao Tzu says in the Daodejing “seek an open mind-the ideal of vacuity, seek composure- the essence of tranquility.”
There’s no way around it.
In the movie Matrix, Neo when taking the red pill discovers he lives an illusion and that he has the power to change this reality. Power within. Not power over.
That’s the difference between “knowing the path and walking the path.”
That’s the natural flow of curiosity. There’s no use in being in a hurry or forcing it.
“It was nature’s intention that there should be no need of great equipment for a good life”, said Seneca. “Every individual can make himself happy.”
For this to happen “he” must explore deep and wide.
