Curiosity

Novelist, Lawrence Naumoff, who teaches creative writing classes in a university, is quoted as saying he sees a bad trend in his students. They have no curiosity, no interest in learning for the sake of learning. They attend his class, never find out his name, and get what they have to in order to get a grade. This is both sad and scary to me because it reveals a major societal downturn. Not that I am surprised, I’ve been watching this slow slide for decades. The last time I brought it up was in a debate in my Advanced English class in 1964 and met with such distain, I’ve kept it to myself ever since. I guess it is safe to speak about this now since others are beginning to see the light.

It is a given that collected general knowledge is the engine of problem solving; problem solving is the foundation of positive growth. If we cannot figure out how to make do with what we have and what we know, then we end up like many of the hurricane Katrina evacuees, not all of which allowed themselves to be ignored by inept government. Helplessness is not a sign of positive growth in the human condition. If we are moving forward in the wrong direction, we might as well be moving backwards.

Some might argue against this but I believe modern technology is at the root of this trend and is, at the same time, both friend and curse to civilization. Because of constant and ever changing technology, there is so much that is new to learn, all things old must be kicked to the curb. This includes most of the greatest most inspirational and elevating elements and processes of civilized society and human achievement acquired at enormous cost. But who cares anymore? The scramble to know about the latest thing seems to have overtaken the need to spend time learning what we have gained from the past. Unfortunately, all that is new to learn is not always worth learning but we are coaxed to believe if we are to survive in a high tech world, we must keep up so we spend our time learning it anyway. We think we are being productive because we now have things that save us time, and we tell ourselves that we are so smart for all we know even as we grow dumber and dumber. We don’t have to commit anything to memory anymore because some soulless device keeps all the data for us. But regardless of how many conveniences we have at our fingertips, time is one thing that cannot be saved; it moves on. To compensate we cut back minutes in one activity only to add on minutes to another. In the end, we find we are hustling faster, sleeping less and worrying more…and ultimately, for all our trouble, knowing less and less. And when the lights go out or the batteries die, all our data is useless to us. We stand there, ignorant as babes. 

Today there is so much information to assimilate, it all must be compartmentalized, divided and doled out in specialized increments. This narrowing down of focus is so pervasive in our culture now, which effects how and what people choose to learn, it spans all industries and professions. The practice of medicine is a prime example of specialization and reduction of broad knowledge. There is no such thing as a liberal education any more, which means there is a huge loss of general curiosity about many and assorted things. Who has time to be curious about anything that does not pertain to the moment at hand?

Unfortunately, what is forgotten about the benefits of knowing a little about a lot and grasping the bigger picture of how all things work together, is that life, regardless of all its new innovations, continues to be made of many experiences. Some of these are thrown at us suddenly and unexpectedly. Problem solving is born of multiple opportunities of having been able to apply liberal knowledge. If we lose our ability to solve problems that we have never been faced with before simply because we have no baseline of common knowledge to draw from, we become completely vulnerable to disaster. 

This then is the point: when we lose our natural curiosity and love of learning for the sake of learning, eventually we forget how to learn deeply and, more importantly, how to discern what is significant to our ability to survive independently. It is a very bad sign, albeit true, that the more basic problem solving skills we lose because we are trusting in someone or something else to be responsible for our survival, the less chance we have to survive. But it is ever so, and a rule of the natural world, that no one is as interested in an individual’s wellbeing than the individual him/herself. Does it make sense then to ignore the basic answer of doing what is in our own best interest and learning how to learn, to be curious and garner information that can not only improve us as humans but society as a whole?

B.F. Skinner said: “Education is what survives when what has been learned has been forgotten” And … “The real problem is not whether machines think but whether men do.”

So, who is B.F. Skinner? 

I have no idea, but I bet I will go find out.

For Him,

Meema

(Psalms 139:12) Even the darkness hideth not from thee, But the night shineth as the day: The darkness and the light are both alike [to thee].  (139:13) For thou didst form my inward parts: Thou didst cover me in my mother's womb.  (139:14) I will give thanks unto thee; for I am fearfully and wonderfully made: Wonderful are thy works; And that my soul knoweth right well. 

Mother Goose

Every year, a pair of Canadian geese claims the small island in the middle of the pond to build their nest. This process begins with several pairs duking it out for a week or two to determine who gets the prime real estate. Once the decision is firm, everyone else has to leave because the male goose will not allow anyone on or even near the pond while the female is nesting. 

This begins sometime in mid March or early April, depending on how long winter persists. But it is always still cold so the mum, who sits on the nest almost 24/7 sometimes must endure weather extremes, such as freezing temperatures, torrential rain, hail, lightening. She does only what she has to do to survive while dad patrols the pond and fusses at her when she dares to take a short break for food and drink. It’s a hard gestation period by any standards, human or animal, in my opinion.

But stalwart sitting on the nest and protecting the pond, keeping all comers at bay, until the goslings are born are not the hardest jobs for mother and father goose. While the tiny island affords some degree of safety for the eggs from marauding nocturnal predators, there is little protection once the fluffy yellow babies are escorted around, being taught how to fend for themselves. When the babes are out and about, the real dangers and odds against their reaching maturity increase exponentially, from everywhere. When they are still very small, big mouth bass can simply pick them off from underneath. Hawks and crows start stalking and waiting for the perfect opportunity to swoop in. Sometimes in the middle of the night a goose ruckus wakes me up and I know there is a life or death battle occurring out on the dark water. I don’t even want to know what that means and who the villain is because then I would have to admit how truly raw, dramatic and very close real nature is. 

Some years, like in 2012, the babes survive. A brood of five made it to adulthood. Another family, with four chicks managed to keep three. This year, though, there were six little hatchlings one day and then a couple days later–none. Nature happens. 

This is the cycle of life on the pond, and in a greater sense, life in general. But this year, for some reason, I have a heart for the mother goose, who sat so stoically on the nest through some terrible spring storms and late bitter cold. The water has never been higher and wisely she had built her nest at the highest point closest to the trunk of the willow tree instead of on the edge as usual otherwise the whole thing would have floated off early on. 

I know that nature has a natural rhythm and it’s foolish to intervene. I know that the cycles, animals that live and those that don’t, keep the ecology in balance. I know that when the geese get old enough to walk around the pond all day they make a terrible mess so I don’t really want them to get out of hand. Even so, though I am more than resolved to let nature take care of itself as God established the perfect order, still in all, I felt bad for mother goose this year. 

The tug on my heart for her somehow leaves me exceptionally grateful for all my blessings  this Mother’s Day. 

For Christ,

Meema

(Matthew 10:28) And be not afraid of them that kill the body, but are not able to kill the soul: but rather fear him who is able to destroy both soul and body in hell.  (10:29) Are not two sparrows sold for a penny? and not one of them shall fall on the ground without your Father:  (10:30) but the very hairs of your head are all numbered.  (10:31) Fear not therefore: ye are of more value than many sparrows. 

On A Lighter Note

My way (way) older sister, Jo, and I have been blessed in our over-the-hill years to live in close proximity after many years of living long distances away from each other. When the weather cooperates we meet to walk around the pond in the mornings for fresh air and exercise. My daughter, Holly, who sprints around the pond, often catches up with us and, in order to maintain the pace of our more mature and measured gait, walks backwards to sufficiently slow herself down.  

As we mosey down the path, two dogs accompany us–Auri and Neo–our grand dogs. Since their owners work, Jo and I, who consider ourselves semi-retired, volunteer to let the dogs hang with us during the day so they don’t have to be alone. We have developed a daily routine now which includes walking, or sometimes riding in the golf-cart to pick up the dogs. Then we walk, or ride, depending on the weather, and/or our disposition of the moment toward walking. We never argue about whether to walk or ride. Neither of us really wants to walk anyway. We discovered this one day when instead of parking the cart so that we could begin our walk, I absentmindedly kept going. There would have been no way to explain to a casual observer why the two old ladies in the golf cart were laughing hysterically, as they followed behind the somewhat confused dogs. Coincidentally, I have found that hysterical laughing is more common now that I am meeting Jo for exercise. I’m pretty sure I needed it and I think she did too, laughing that is, not exercise. I suspect that we have reached the point of no return, in a world going to hell in a hand-basket, where one must laugh to stave off uncontrollable weeping. Under such dismal circumstances exercise seems somewhat moot.

Even though Jo is, as I mentioned, way, way older than I, a fact I am often compelled to remind her of, for some mysterious reason, I have caught up to her in age physically, if not chronologically. Degrees of physical decline, arthritis, assorted other pains, and forgetfulness are non-quantifiable in terms of years and thus it seems we have come to be equally old.  We’ve both scratched off or deleted everything on our bucket lists. We have both been-there/done-that and more, running now mostly on auto-pilot. Though different in many ways, we have both always been doers who love to learn and do and we have both forgotten more things that we learned and did than most people hope to do in a lifetime. No brag, just fact.

But what we both have learned together in the past nine months of pseudo-exercise walking/riding is that growing old, apparently, is not for the faint of heart. One must be pragmatic and good-humored to suffer the indignities of aging with grace. I, for one, and I believe Jo agrees, do not understand the obsession with living long enough to advance into the triple digits. I haven’t even hit 70 yet and I am already wondering why anyone would aspire to be 90. Another 24 years? Can’t imagine.

So, both of us, being nothing if not practical, are taking what is left to us and enjoying everything day to day, minute to minute. Given the hard truth that cannot be ignored anyway that we are no longer young and there are many more things that we can not nor wish to do than there are those things we can, therefore we have embraced the point in fact that the smallest pleasures are indeed what matter, after all. 

At the end of our exhausting (if not exhilarating) morning exercise we often pause to chat over coffee, hashing over current events, positing the perfect solutions for the problems of the world. We try to avoid comparing the hallmarks of our downhill slide from seniors to elders, like how putting on our pjs and crawling into bed shortly after an early dinner never seems to get old, focusing instead on things we enjoy like tracking the various activities of the wildlife on the pond or going to lunch together at least once a week and doing our grocery shopping together. We are an exclusive two-person book club and share deep discussions about the current titles we are reading, she preferring fiction and I non-fiction. We are on the same page spiritually and can talk with discernment about faith and trust in Christ as the only place to hide in the escalating times of trouble.

And walking the dogs (sometimes following them in the golf-cart). 

After all these years of just being sisters connected by familial bonds, now we are not only good friends, we are an ongoing source of good humor for ourselves and to our family. We are referred to, in great fun poked at us, as the Two Grannies, Little Doggy Daycare. It’s okay though. We don’t mind being the cause for laughter. After all, what better legacy can we leave to those we love? We have unwittingly adopted our dear brother’s life-long motto: Better to leave them laughing. 

In the end, what treasure on earth can buy a belly laugh?

For Christ,

Meema

(Matthew 6:19) Lay not up for yourselves treasures upon the earth, where moth and rust consume, and where thieves break through and steal:  (6:20) but lay up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where neither moth nor rust doth consume, and where thieves do not break through nor steal:  (6:21) for where thy treasure is, there will thy heart be also.