Tidbits – Education.

All the education in the world is focused on helping you understand every spoken or written word. And the world around you. That is the paradigm of knowledge. This is education that can be imparted. The sources could be all the books and literature that is out there and the medium could be a classroom or a seminar. The subjects to be learned here are definitive and the success of the learning process can be tested through traditional tests and graded as we know it all too well. The questions here are ‘how’, ‘what’ and, surprisingly, even ‘why’.

The other kind of education comes from understanding the interplays between you and your environment. On a daily basis. As you live life. If you are aware enough to sit up and take notice, that is. This education is experiential. It helps you understand yourself, what the world means to you and what you mean to the world. This is the paradigm of wisdom. Wisdom helps you understand silence just as well as the spoken word. This education is imbibed, not imparted. The source here is your life and your experiences. The medium is the entire ecosystem that you exist in. The subjects here are open to interpretation and there is no definitive right or wrong answer to questions. What worked in one situation may not in another. What is right is one situation may be wrong in another. Most things in this paradigm are relative. The premise is dynamic and moving. The questions here are ‘how come’, ‘what the...’, ‘why not’ kind.

Neither kinds of education can thrive without the other. What’s the point of all the education of the first kind if it cannot be applied effectively to impact lives? And what’s the point of all the education of the second kind if you do not understand the phenomena that belong to the first kind so as to interpret the experiences?

Some interesting read on this and related topics -

http://www.forbes.com/sites/sap/2012/08/15/what-is-the-purpose-of-education/

Tip of the day – How to live …appeal to your senses!

Take a short break from your routine, step back from the environment you are right now in, take a few deep breaths and just look around all the people around you. Wherever you are, whatever you do, it is likely you would find folks interacting with one gadget or the other. Someone on a laptop, another snuggling on a couch in front of a television, yet another browsing, talking, reading or texting on a phone or simply jogging with a headphone listening to music. Look for how many folks you come across who are enjoying the experience of their primary act for that moment and look for how long they stay with it before getting diverted. Chances are that they would be in minority!   

Reading about music is not quite the same as listening to it. Listening to music is not quite the same as playing it. Reading the preview or review of a movie is not the same as watching it. Watching a movie in an unknown language with subtitles is a far cry from watching a movie in a known language where you can follow the dialogues.

If you see the photograph of a beautiful or exotic flower, you are visually energized. It is not nearly the same as touching and smelling a flower. Rose fragrance appeals to the olfactory but is not the same as holding a rose to your nose. Watching a coffee ad on television is not the same as smelling it brewing! Reading through a recipe book with instructions, ingredients and illustrations of a recipe isn’t quite like eating it. What’s a wine if you do not get to smell or taste it?

Seeing photographs of snowy mountains is never the same as breathing the mountain air with a chill in the winds and seeing the enormity of it from its midst. Watching a documentary of wild animals in a dense forest with a commentary in the background does not convey the absolute silence or pitch darkness or when they are broken while in the jungle. The most beautiful images of the beaches, the sunrise, the waves and tides cannot give you the feeling of standing on a beach with the warmth of the sun on your back and the din of the waves and the infinitum of the horizon and the salty humidity of the coastal climate.

It is said that you ‘experience’ something when there are at least 3 senses involved in any single act. I would extend that argument to several acts that appeal to almost all senses we know of. But the crux is that one needs to go out there and experience it. Any amount of time spent watching, listening to or reading about things you like and love cannot measure up to experiencing it in person. There is an urgent need for people to go out and live their lives in the real world, be aware of and to experience everything around them…to appeal to their senses! Evolution has shown us that faculties that are not utilized for generations could eventually turn vestigial. The electronic generation runs a risk of beginning the process of doing precisely that to our species…by going virtual!

So go out there and live your real life…by appealing to your senses!