Wisdom

"As both a student and a teacher I have discovered something fundamental about the essence of learning. There is an ancient saying that I found best illustrates the key to life long learning. The translation goes something like this "Only when the student is ready, will the teacher appear." In my experience as a perpetual student of life, this has proven to be so true. When we realize that the amount we really know about life, the world and the universe is so tiny compared to the true reality of our existence one can not help but be humbled. It is only when we are humble enough to acknowledge how little we really know, that we are truly open to the lessons that life and the world around us have to teach us.

It is my experience that we often learn much more from our failures than from our successes. In fact I would say that every "mistake" is in fact a "gift in disguise" if we look for the lesson it offers. Like Edison who tried over a thousand experiments that failed before he discovered the first light bulb that illuminated our world. Like DeVinci who by observing birds in flight designed a flying machine?(also known as the "ornithopter") over 400 years before the Write Brothers were even born. Yet when a team of researcher actually built what he had designed it flew! The understanding of flight broke not only of the limits of our movement but of our perspective. Our quest for knowledge has been and always will be essential to the evolution of human existence on this planet.

These breakthroughs in human understanding were routed in the powers of observation and imagination, as well as an unfettered enthusiasm for the potential of?exploring the unknown. But that thirst for discovery, all starts with accepting the reality of how little we do know and how much we have to learn. It begins with humility.

We need to be constant students on an unending quest for understanding that which lays before us. It is in our humility that we find the biggest lessons in life. It is in testing the limits our our knowledge that we discover new realities that until now were just beyond our reach. It is exploring the question "why" that we find answers to questions that we have not even imagined to ask. We are all students of how to live on earth and how to contribute to the true understanding of our reality. It is in that mindset that we en-devour to break down the walls of our ignorance.

My life has been full and very rewarding in many ways, but my greatest ambition in life remains to always be a good and humble student."

from "The Man With Nine Lives" by Garnet McPherson