I was doing some journaling today. It was a means to an end. It kept me sitting down for a bit.
My knee was feeling great yesterday. Like great enough that I was pretty sre I’d be fine to put my backpack on tomorrow and walk to the hatchery office.
So you know what I did?
I fucked it up again.
I pushed it in a way I shouldn’t have yesterday evening, sideways….because I like to sit in a weird sideways curled up way….and when I woke up today, it was worse than it’s been in a week.
Aaaanyway…..
When I planted myself somewhere, like the freaking invalid I apparently am at the moment, and I pulled out my notebook to scribble some dark thoughts into….and I started poking through boxes of craft supplies and pens and pencils and things….and I came across this pencil.
The pencil is from The Graduate Hotel, a hotel I stayed at about a year ago while visiting Michigan State University for a fish biology conference.
I loved the motto embossed on the pencil because It emphasizes that the experience of being a student, in terms of learning and discovery, doesn’t end with graduation. The acquisition of knowledge, curiosity, learning …all of these are, or should be, a lifelong pursuit. When we ask questions and dig into the knowledge base we expose our own limited, and often flawed, knowledge, we discover our biases, we grow and expand our thinking. Exploring information should be for increasing our capacity for understanding, not for supporting an opinion.
Plato distinguished between knowledge and opinion and placed knowledge on a higher plane. He believed that opinion resides in the realm of appearances, while knowledge grasps the underlying reality.
There is a quote that is often mis-attributed to Plato that speaks to this.
“Opinion is really the lowest form of human knowledge. It requires no accountability, no understanding. The highest form of knowledge… is empathy, for it requires us to suspend our egos and live in another’s world. It requires profound purpose larger than the self kind of understanding.”
~ Bill Bullard
Plato referred to empathy as the highest form of knowledge; a constant process of attempting to not only see the world as others see it, but also feel it as they do. Empathy is not the same as compassion: empathy is the ability to understand the feelings of another; compassion is the desire to alleviate suffering. Interestingly, some have suggested that Plato didn’t see compassion as a virtue since it requires vulnerability to the same problems as the person being pitied. Rather, Plato saw empathy as important because through understanding the perspectives and emotions of others, individuals could better evaluate moral situations and make more informed decisions about how to act. But….from empathy, compassion and ethical behaviour typically flow.
Wouldn’t it be wonderful if everyone was curious about everyone else, in a constructive and empathetic way. If we all had a learning mindset…always.
I believe that this world would be a better place if we all continued to see ourselves as students, throughout our entire lives.
